The image is well composed, and the colours make it aesthetically pleasing. I don't know how it could be improved to extend its ethnogrpahic import. Although it could be a little sharper.
I think this image serves the author's argument, but I'd much rather see the posters! Perhaps you could include a few of these along with the image? I'd love to get a glimps of the visual rhetoric being deployed in this discourse. I dont know if you took pictures of these posters, but I think putting a couple of the right ones together with this image and a good title could create a pretty cohesive visual argument.
I like it as it is. Perhaps I would try to combine this picture with a different one, not the “bodies in the water picture.” Both photos are great and make sense together. However, I think the author can be more playful with visibility and “focal points” and use a picture where the thermal power plant is in the front and fishing practices are in the background… out of focus, in the dark.
Given the situation described in the caption, I actually like how the toxicity at issue is not immediately intelligible. It parallels the fact that the actual toxicity of the ferns simply cannot be known without further inspection. But it could be interesting to include some sort of unsettling visual clue in the image that suggests there is underlying layer of risk, some way of inviting the viewer to think and look harder at this image to understand how it is conveying toxicity.
Perhaps playing with some sort of trope or cultural symbol associated with invisible risk or with not knowing whether you are currently at risk or not. Something like the Trojan Horse blended with Schrodinger's cat...
I'm not literally suggesting you should paste a "Trojan Cat" somewhere into the image like some kind of "Where's Waldo" game. To be honest, I don't really have a clear suggestion on how to achieve what I am suggesting. But it could be interesting to figure out how to work in something visual that represents/illustrates/hints at the undetectable level of radioactivity of these scrolls.
I like it as it is —I would like for it to have more light, so the fishermen’s bodies are more visible and we have a more sense of the space. But, in general, I think it is a good image.
I would also like to know a little more about the differences of the economic activities related to the income. The caption talks about the Motorola Plant. This economic-environmental factor also plays an important role in the inequalities. I’m sure people in the community work in the plant but do not “own” it.
The caption does great work to show the ethnographic richness of the visual -- I am wondering how it could be combined or contrasted with other visuals. Shahab's map of "prinicipal problem areas" in Washington DC could make for an interesting pair!
The visual is interesting, and I would love to hear more about the archive that it seems to come from. At this point it is not yet clear what the ethnographic purchase of the image is -- but it could easily become relevant. Are there any other images that you could juxtapose/contrast it with?
You could take a look at Danica's caption and visual of federal land ownership in the US -- what kind of sentiments are usually linked to the map that you are showing us here? How do people deploy the map? What are its particular blindspots and simplifications?
The visualization aims to show how maps, especially those used in the context of urban policymaking, are politicizing certain kinds of aesthetics about how the city should look. There are conflicting meanings of what is public use and the definitions of blight, which index social and political dimensions of how urban life is spatially located. How might you visualize these two arguments in the image? Could you perhaps show an X and Y axis of demographics of these areas which are classified as blight ?