This photo is one of only a few images that include African American pioneers in the “settler” story of Los Angeles. By including this image--front and center--the contributor is making visible a different narrative and history of LA at this particular time and space. In many ways the archive is haunted by this absence and the contributor is asking the question, what does it mean to make this history visible? What does it mean to do so now?
I think a conversation about haunting as really disrupting whole processes of knowledge production could be important here. This is one smudge/trace/part of the archive. One that is often neglected or completely ignored/written over. The interesting part here, though, is unlike many archives where there is a complete absence, this photo almost renders a partial absence. There is documentation. There is proof. There is some visibility, though small. What can you do with this small puzzle piece? How does something that was only documented on the periphery become the center?
Found image. Black and white, completely old school. Different shadings. The light on the right side of the picket fence caught my eye first. Is there something unique or historical about the picket fence at this time? The interesting thing here, too, is that the focus is on the house, not the settlers themselves. In fact, they are almost invisible in the photo. You have to really stare and search for family, which actually seems to be a metaphor for the archive at this time in general. The contributor had to really search for this photo even in the first place.
I think some of the metaphor of having to really search the photo for the settlers actually is part of the ethnographic import of the image, but another tactic could be to actually blur the home, the picket fence, and everything in the photo except the settlers, actualling landing the focus on the people themselves. This might represent what you’re trying to do with the project as a whole. So it would be a sort of reversal of what is being portrayed in the photo now.
This photo especially gets at silence and absence as forms of toxicity. Silence produces toxicity, as does absence. These toxicities actually continue to haunt the archive even today.