This dual set of images encourages the view to consider how one maps gentrification projects. I am thinking of work by Lindsey Dillon on Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard and the "Breathers of Bayview Point" (see Dillon 2015, 2017, 2018) on gentrification and the toxicity of blowing apart "ruined" buildings to renovate them into something new. Dillon's work examines both the social toxicity as well as the radiactive particles that become airborne. The displacement of BOPIC communities and high rent prices could perhaps be termed "toxic assets" of economic investiment, but the questions of who and what the toxic subject is/subjects are is not entirely clear. Mel Chen's work teases out these multuple implications of "toxic" in economic and ecological contexts. I wonder if this "mapping toxicity" might extend to thinking about the toxicity of the materials destroyed (asbestos would be a likely suspect) as well as the social aspects of toxic relations. The title of the photo essay also summons questions of possibility in ruin as it questions what "renovation" means and for whom. Gastón Gordillo's Rubble (2014) and Anna Tsing's musings on mushrooms and finding life in ruins (2015) might present interesting arguments to either weave as coincident or conflicting arguments for ruins/renovations that come with promises built into the social fabric of the city
This image is interesting because it calls out the problem of a high medical expense through relying on infographic conventions (bar, tables, arrows, etc.) , those which medical and insurance companies themselves utilize for commercial purposes. This image calls to mind scholarly arguments about data visualization (graphesis) and the history of its conventions.
They mentioned this in their Design Statement, but these images represent the "slow violence" of environmental toxins and the canary narratives associated with who inadvertently or purposefully are made to be "warning signs" for the rest of the community.
The image seems to communicate environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity in what was once a lush rainforest.
Juxtaposing the two images of Puerto Rico and Donald Trump seems like a great strategy. As a person who is unfamiliar with the stories regarding the environmental disaster in Puerto Rico, I felt like the images would gain traction if the irony between them can be more intuitively grapsed. The images convey a sense of humour, which I thought was great, but I think it can benefit from more storytelling. Perhaps this can be elaborated in the commentary: Was the Trump picture ever a meme?, etc.
The caption of this image points to disaster studies' arguments around slow disaster and de-centering our definitions of disaster from event based understandings.
for me it's an image of the workings of Foucauldian micropower: how the toxic force of a police morality and mentality gets transmitted and channeled on paper, paper that a typewriter ribbon has passed over and transmitted inked characters, characters that are carefully centered (physically since there was no paragraph-formatting button to push), sometimes IN SOLID CAPS FOR THE POLICING AUTHOR-ITY, sometimes underlined which involved going back over the text, all in an unvarying but uneven and slightly wavering Courier font. Copied, mailed or carried, read, and shaping the mentalities and behaviors of thousands of cops and officials. Mundane quotidian racism of the typewritten "program."
The image communicates a great deal about how the LASPD is constructing force and policing as a paternalistic type of care of children. It suggests that, it is for the own good of the ethnic minority school children population that arrests are made. However, the shocking statistic in the image below the LASPD is a counterargument to underlying argument of the LASPD visual rhetoric. The statistical image below counters the rhetoric of LASPD’s force for the sake of ‘protection.'
I see the image’s subject as the mismatch in the LASPD’s presentation of themselves as a benevolent force among predominantly black and brown children and the statistical documentation of the LASPD’s racist policing.
The critical commentary offers quantitative data re acres of rainforest destroyed (that which appears to be immediately represented by the photo) and 40% of population affected by mercury contamination. There are no people in this photo, or in any of the photos. Is that deliberate? Is the idea not to put a human face on the toxicant contamination b/c it's too 'sentimental' or 'invasive'? This contrasts the Minimata photos of the clawed hand. Part of me wonders why there's an avoidance of representing the toxicity as embodied in the people--the miners: it this b/c neurological damage is hard to see on the surface of bodies?