It’s no secret that many nations’ economies have been in rough shape for some time now. The effects are felt at every level of society, more evident in certain places than others, but nonetheless present. As photographers, our roles shift depending upon our personal interests, surroundings, and means. While you may or may not consider yourself a social documentary photographer, it seems only fitting that the state of your respective economy play a role in your life as a photographer.

How have you been affected by these changes? Has the content of your work shifted and begun to incorporate themes relating to the global recession? Have you had to sell equipment, or put off buying that lens or body you want due to low funds? What is going on in your world?

Although the deadline is fast approaching, SocialDocumentary.net’s “Crisis & Opportunity: Documenting the Global Recession” call for entries might fit a project you’ve been working on.

“In the spirit of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the New Deal in the 1930s, when photographers documented the hardship and proposed solutions, SocialDocumentary.net (SDN) is issuing a Call for Entries. We are looking for photo essays that provide insight into how ordinary citizens around the world are coping during these new “hard times” and how individuals, companies, industries, family businesses, communities, and governments are responding to the crisis.”

There is a small fee for the competition, and only a few days left to enter, but if this sounds like something up your alley, please visit the site for more information.

Documenting the Global Recession

All photographers and writers working on a collaborative documentary project should look into the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, given annually by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. It’s a highly competitive and prestigious award, and worth an entry from those with serious projects.

“The year 2010 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor documentary prize, a $20,000 award given annually by the Center for Documentary Studies. First announced a year after the Center’s founding at Duke University, the prize was created to encourage collaboration between documentary writers and photographers in the tradition of the acclaimed photographer Dorothea Lange and writer and social scientist Paul Taylor. In 1941 Lange and Taylor published An American Exodus, a book that renders human experience eloquently in text and images and remains a seminal work in documentary studies. The Lange-Taylor Prize honors their important collaborative work.

The Lange-Taylor Prize is offered to a writer and a photographer in the early stages of a documentary project. By encouraging such collaborative efforts, the Center for Documentary Studies supports the documentary process in which writers and photographers work together to record the human story.”

For more information, requirements and deadlines go to the CDS website: