One Producer's Take on Putting a Human Face on the Foreclosure Story

Making Sen$e -- October 19, 2010 at 6:46 PM EDT

One Producer's Take on Putting a Human Face on the Foreclosure Story

Editor's note: Here on Making Sen$e, we like to highlight great and interesting work, tools and multimedia that are circulating the Web. While those usually involve the bylines of economists or business experts, that's not always the case.

While filming a a weekly meeting of advocacy group City Life/Vida Urbana on location in Boston for part II of the foreclosure series, producer Diane Lincoln Estes ran into freelance photographer and multimedia producer Kelly Creedon, who was also documenting the event.

"I had started hearing about City Life eviction blockades from other folks who were attending and was just overwhelmed with the human side of the story," Creedon said.

Paul Solman has talked about the emotional impact of the human stories from the financial downturn -- whether it's unemployment or a home foreclosure (or, as so often is the case, both) -- and how it is unprecedented in his decades-long reporting career. You can watch the first part in the series, Show Me the Mortgage.

Creedon continued:

For me, being there and asking personal questions and getting people to tell these intense stories is really moving, really challenging.
What I find compelling is the personal transformation as people decide, 'I am going to stand up and I am going to tell my story.' That moment of transformation when people go from feeling victimized to when they feel empowered.

We thought her audio sound slides were really powerful, so we've shared a few of them here with you. The full project can been seen here.

Kelly Creedon produced these audio slideshows as part of a project funded in part by Mass Humanities to document families brought together after their homes were foreclosed.

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