Much like your previous images, I feel as though this one does a lot of work to discuss and visualize the historical formations behind categories such as "Latinx." In situating this image in reference to you the police report, particularly the ways in which anti-Blackness and anti-Mexicanness get expressed, I wonder about the intersections between the two? In what ways is anti-Blackness embedded into Mexican history? What does this mean for afro-Mexican's? How are the histories of afro-Mexicans erased in both Mexican and US contexts. How does such racist histories then get further silenced in the homogeniziation of the "Latino" category. In some ways, the toxicity may amount from our own hegemonic conceptions of race/class/gender.
I wonder what other way we could have visualized this? Or in what other ways can we visualize the category Latino as a remnant of toxic history? I would have been interesting to possibly include an image of the census itself.
Police and policing mechanisms bring to mind many forms of toxicity. In many ways, the visualizing of the term "police" interpellates the reader right away. The text is affective. Like a Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger piece, the observer is meant to read, engage, and/or question their own positionality in reference to the text (the text in this instance as with your other artifact is the image). I feel as though this response is indicative of the ways in which state, particularly the racist police state, is toxic/produces toxicity.
Aside from the immediate reaction to the simplicity of "police" written on a white background, I feel as though your description does a good job at illustrating the ways in which toxicity spreads. By situating anti-Mexican racism in anti-blackness the viewer is meant to understand how structures of violence are mended and changed to affect numerous populations.
I looked through the string of images and am hoping to keep a running annotation all three of them. They are beautiful. I am not certain what I am looking at, though, and whether this is part of the (analytical) point? Are these images/is this image a kernel of maize? Is it a single soil particle? Is this first image chromatically different from the other three in its muted coloring because of agrotoxins, or are the others that much more "alive" because of the chemicals? The image thus holds me in suspense. I am not sure whether it opens up the concept of toxicity so much as suspends it, momentarily, until I can place it chromatically, toxically, and analytically.
This image demonstrates how the logics and ethics of the police state enable such vital public infrastructures as Santa Ana's needle exchange program to be eradicated under the false pretenses of protecting "public welfare." It also shows a high level of ignorance or disregard, among Santa Ana's city officials, for the well-established findings and recommendations made by medical anthropologists and other social scientists that study HIV transmission. Together these observations demonstrate how cultural and structural factors, like the criminalization and moralization of certain self-destructive behaviours, amplify the effective toxicity of highly addictive drugs and infectious diseases like HIV.
I liked the way in which you commented on the image as "here I am." I thought it was an interesting parallel to ethnopgrahic reflexiviity, the ethnographic present, as well as ethnographic presence. While, upon first glance, I would not necessarily gather that this image is a reflection of waning industry, home, or labor I found the description to be helpful to situating the visualization. In many ways, I feel as though your image is ethnographic in the way that it brings you, the producer of the text and image, into its realization. I wonder then if our visualizations only have to reflect our content/concepts, I wonder if they can also be a way of reflecting our methodolgical practices.
The juxtaposition of these various images and headlines sheds insight into the ways toxic climate change is always represented in multiple, diverse ways. The composition of the photo shows the ways in which climate change requires cross-scalar definition and representation.
Perhaps what is so striking to me about these images is that there are no people in them. Is this a choice about protecting the dignity of those who find themselves living outside of the "American Dream"? The images themselves do not immediately render themselves llegible to me as subjects of "toxic vulnerability." A more amplified textual analysis would bring the power of the images home. Are there toxic living conditions within the shelters as well? By "toxic," I do mean in a chemical or heavy metal contaminant -- because of the effects of NIMBY, whether it is a homeless shelter, soup kitchen, detention center or prison, these structures tend to be housed on or near to landfills, Superfund sites, or otherwise polluted areas. The images here are so clean... so perhaps the analysis might also entail how sanitary cartoon images of pain and distress are disseminated.
It strikes me that the first and third images in this series render toxicity differently from the second. This image and the first juxtapose two forms of order. First, there's the order of petrochemical production--long lines of cylindrical tanks capped by OHSA-approved guard rails, cooling towers, pipe clusters running parallel and perpendicular to one another--. Second, there's the order of the residential neighborhood--well-pruned trees, wooden telephone poles, small parks, backyards, vinyl siding. Who knows what's going on behind the veneer of order on both sides of the fence, and the fence itself may be an "ineffective boundary." But the logic of each domain and the boundary between them are clear; the power of the image lies in showing these two highly visually distinct forms of order abutting each other. Toxicity is when industry and domesticity get too close.
The second image, in contrast, juxtaposes two dis-orders: scrap metal in the background, scrub in the foreground, and the muddy bayou (a third dis-order) in between. Toxicity is where order breaks down and residues run together.
I wonder whether you can read images one and three and image two against each other. Reading one and three in light of two could gesture toward a) the leakages, emissions, exposures, putatively-closed-actually-open systems, and other fissures that run through the ostensible order of one and three. Reading two in light of one and three could situate this disorderly end of the road as a node within broader toxicity-producing infrastructures and logics. This could perhaps help illuminate a full picture of toxicity--the logic by which chemical toxicity is produced, rationalized (in multiple senses), situated adjacent to sites of everyday life, and by which it diffuses across borders--and call attention to the blindered views (images 1 or 3 without image 2; image 2 without images 1 or 3) that make that picture difficult to resolve.
What I am curious about in this image of the American Dream is who the toxic subject might be. While homeless people are often considered "dirty" and a "plague" on the city, I think that this image attempts to question just who and what is toxic. Is the American Dream itself a toxic "pipe" dream based on impossible-to-achieve socio-economic mobility for all? Further interesting in the context of UCI, is the institutions declaration of where it rates in relation to other colleges for advancing the American Dream https://news.uci.edu/2017/06/09/doing-the-most-for-the-american-dream/ and https://news.uci.edu/2018/10/02/advancing-the-american-dream/. Given that a portion of UC students (at Irvine and other UC's) experience both food and housing insecurity, contextualizing education, this founding narrative of the American (Toxic) Dream might contribute further fodder for analysis. Additionally, which "America?" South America is effectively written out of the United States' version of the "American Dream," whether at the border or "housed" in detention centers.
This contiguous Brunswig building image fascinating for the commentary on the passage of time, how the building still stands. I appreciate the care in juxtaposing these images so that the building maintains its shape across the border of the separate photographs. What is not yet clear to me - yet - in this wonderful photo essay, is just what the figure of toxicity is, or, what the figures of toxicity are. In considering that the focus of the project is to think through toxicity as an “extremely harsh or harmful quality,” I would be curious to have the accompanying text examine just what or who is toxic throughout all of these images. In the previous image commentary, I mentioned the "toxic assets" of the economic investments in gentrification or "urban renewal" projects. What are the environmental risks associated with renovation and renewal in the context of urban expansion? How do those living in homeless encampments becoming multiple vulnerbale to toxicity? From breathing the fumes of passing cars, not-so-sanitary sleeping and eating conditions, to further social exclusion, this image can open up multiple ways to consider toxicity in its economic, ecological, and socio-political aspects.