Tiberge, the blogger at Gallia Watch who helps us "stay au courant of what French patriots are doing and saying," has
posted an image of the logo for Pôle Emploie, the French government agency that registers the unemployed and helps them find work, alongside a photo of a disheveled individual running down some steps (second image above). I found the bigger image
posted on Le Figaro. The out-of-focus photo of an Arab looking man interacting with what looks like an employment counselor (the fourth image) is from Le Nouvel Observateur. The others are in various news or blog sites, and more logo/people juxtapositions can be viewed
here (many are strangely out of focus, but this photographic choice of image is probably to preserve anonymity and not to identify individuals - the racial background of some of these is hard to decipher).
This is a smart logo, carefully designed most certainly by a professional graphic designer, who must have put in quite a few hours and won over several competitive designs, to have his selected for the agency.
Yet, the sordid realities of French unemployment is juxtaposed next to this smart logo. The disheveled youth, the Muslim man, the black guy, the white girl with unkempt blond hair, are not smart enough for the logo.
And an even smarter photographer has taken the logo with a special effect which makes the image look as though it is splintering or breaking apart (bottom photo). An apt symbol for the over-loaded agency, and for France.
