I would like the author to unfold her interlocutor’s affective reference to a “scary” landscape before the arrival of the plant —is no longer scare a prevalent emotion in this place? Aren’t people scared of the toxicity that the plant brings about? Has scare been displaced by other emotions?
I am not sure about the last part of the caption; I think that toxicity is not absent in the picture—it is pretty much there.
I also think that it would be lovely to unpack visibility as bifocality —I see a great opportunity to talk about these two 'economic' practices (fishing and energy production) at the same time.
I like this image. The picture and the caption capture ethnographically two different yet related practices: they are in the same toxic landscape, albeit their relation to toxicity and toxic materials is different. As with the other image, I like the dynamic between dark and light, and this picture is not as obscure as the first one, which is good.
The picture, however, might complicate what the author suggests, that “this sensorial transformation of place, from jackals to smokestacks, is where toxicity becomes visible.” Visibility, as evoked by the image, is more nuanced and oscillating—it seems to be about bifocality.
The caption builds nicely on the thoughts of the fisherman -- imagining how the place changed with the presence of a toxic facility. His statement gets at the heart of what we are trying to do in our own project, asking how a place becomes toxic, through which kind of dynamics. The image of the men at work contrasts slightly with the longer caption that describes how fishermen sit and reflect on their surroundings, providing the ethnographer with commentary. The daydreaming of a toxic-free place creates a nostalgic sentiment.