I really can't. The image tells a rich story: I can see the fish, the harvest that will become commodity, freshly drawn from a landscape whose toxicity is implied by the industrial background. It's clear what is going on and the composition itself is pleasing.
I wonder if as a way of illustrating the point that you make - whether you could find a ceremony of a military chaplain? As that would bring together the religious aspect, the intertis and the military.
It is a powerful first image for the photo essay, and I like the image as it is, yet the caption needs to do more work.
If possible the ethnographer can add locations of the landmines and areas destructed by legacies of war, illegal mining and illicit crop production. This will enrich the image by showing overlaps of multiple narratives of toxicities.
In the visual there is an explanation about the words in red and the words in green. What do the words in yellow represent? It would be interesting if there were some kind of representation contrasting what residents (or even activists) think about the text.
The caption reminds us of ever present toxics in our daily lives. I would love to hear more about the deeper connection of this multiple toxicities the author hints at. Does Velu talk about these other sites of contamination? Do people differentiate between one form of toxicity and another? I love the description about the nets as a direct point of contact / point of entry to toxicity, could the author tell us more about these interconnections?
According to me, the image is aptly suggestive of the narrative associated with it.
It would be beneficial if there was a way to enhance the image since it is slightly pixilated and difficult to read. Maybe also consider showing the step with the original statement, which might be a way to actually fully articulated everything your description says through the image itself.
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.
The image is an interesting way representing the narrative the ethnographer wants to convey.