Perhaps the rarity of this image could some how be represented to create a visual argument that aligns with the caption. This is an interesting problem because, with the caption, the image is metonymic of a lack of other images... but visual representations of lack are conceptually tricky. So I'm not exactly sure how to go about that. You combine the image with a pithy statistic, or perhaps include some of the metadata of the image that signifies its rarity? Or perhaps you could include a lot of blank space around the image to indicate the absense? I don't know if i like any of these suggestions in particular, but I hope there is potential for play in and around them.
This image is a found image. It is a metonym of a mode of black life in early settling of Los Angeles as well as a metonym of the exclusions of the archive.
I think this image could use a discussion of your own experience of this archive, how you came upon its gaps and exclusions, and how this informs your understanding of toxicity. How did you find this image? Where was it located? Did you ask anyone for help? What do/did the people who work there have to say about your investigation/critique of their space? How does this archive, as a physical/digital space that also has a specific cultural connotation as authoritative source of information feed into the toxicity? Is it this archive in particular that is toxic or "the archive" in general? Or is it the exclusions within the archive that are toxic? Or, rather, are these exclusions merely indicative of the more widely dispersed cultural-toxins of US/Californian/LA society? Or is it some form of combination?
What I find interesting about this image and about this project is that, as a recognition of the archive as a "toxic place" and more specifically as a pharmakon (in Derrida's sense of both toxin and cure), it has the potential to change, extend, or rather diversify the functions of the archive.
While at first light, it might appear to be a worthy goal of the archive to be fully encapsulating, representative, and comprehensive, the famous distinction between the map and the territory has shown how this futile effort ultimately defeats the very purpose of the archive as an intelligible space. That is, as a space of representation, the exclusion of information is a necessary precondition to the functioning of any archive. However, when these exclusions amount to the erasure of entire lifeworlds of the subaltern, they can also be rightfully described toxic, in that they yeild a representation of history that naturalizes and validates a white-supremacist culture that perpetuates inequalities in the present.
So how does this toxic attribute translate into the "curative" dimension of the pharmakon? Well, the historical archive is both toxic and curative in that it is simultaneously as metonymic of life in a historical era as it is of the epistemological biases and social prejudices that have survived to the present. To employ Jakobson's concepts of speech functions, the archive has a phatic function as a channel of information that opens up access to previous modes of life, but it also has a poetic function, whereby analysts can scrutinize the processes of selection and curation for indices of the more toxic dimensions of past and present structures of feeling. Thus, engaging in this sort of analysis can serve as the "talking cure" described by Freud, where the toxic attributes of the unconscious are brought to the surface in a way that makes them more intelligible and manageable.
This image functions as a metonym in multiple senses. First of all, as it is one of the few images of early black settlers in Los Angeles, it stands in for the whole set of images an information about black life in this place during this era that does not exist. At the same time, this instance of metonymy is also metonymic itself; that is, it evidences an absence of attention and record of the subaltern which is generalizable across the entire project of "the archive."