Down in Florida Ruffing’s photos captured the way the economic recession hit this state especially hard. He photographed yards sale put on by people who had lost their home to foreclosure and desperately needed the money to pay the rest of their bills.

He also met yard-salers hawking items that other homeowners left behind after their homes were foreclosed on.

“There was this whole underground network of people who scavenged items,” he says.

Fortunately, there is also a flipside to the doom and gloom, he says. To many people, both buyers and sellers, he says yard sales also represented a new and more calculated approach to living within our means.

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