In 1929, the US Dollar was backed by gold. Now it's backed by nothing more than your faith.

Around 44% of homeless people in 2009 were employed. In 2010 - 9.9% of Whites, 12.1% if Asians, 26.6% of Hispanics and 28.4% of Blacks - of the population in the US lived in poverty. In that same year that amounted to 45.3 million people and 22% of those were under 18. As recently as 2013 a Unicef report ranked the US as having the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world.

As recently as April 2014 Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have raised the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour - despite overwhelming public support for the measure.

While these statistics are shocking numbers - they become almost abstracted when attempting to consider the human cost.

Parallels can and are regularly drawn between the Great American Depression and the 2008 Recession. These typically focus on figures of the number of unemployed, the population shift from farming to working in towns and cities and the resulting effect on those numbers.

These can be listed and debated at length. They are all available to look at in the US Census and numerous economic papers. There is no 'freedom of information' request to file. These numbers are out there - in the open - like a looped video running perpetually showing the same car crash. Too few people are asking why this is the status quo.

Changes in the banking systems regulations, corporation rights and the consequential changes to society - has resulted in a situation that appears to be the new norm.

Artist's note:
The bleached wooden frames indicate miles of fencing – faded in the sun and eroded by wind, rain and snow. They are as stripped back as the subjects in the collection.

We see all members of the family here – the father, the man and wife, the twin daughters and the boy with his best friend – a bull frog.

The background colours and composition are inspired by a series of photos by Walker Evans. He shot images of shacks constructed with discarded timber sheets and doors from collapsed housing across the southern states in the US; the various colours of the panels in different stages of rot and peeling, only adding further layers to the life they silently witnessed, no longer existing.

The signage is copies of the actual companies which went into terminal decline during the great depression. The statistics included are actually from the 2008/9 recession – tricking the viewer into to thinking that they are actually 1930s figures – never imagining things were really that bad in the present day.

Again we see the figures drawn – transparent against their decaying background – forgotten ghosts once more and victims at the hands of decisions by ‘other’.