Rachel Lee & Mehar Maju: Freeway Woodland

The image is ethnographic in that it records the view of someone who lives or has lived in the neighborhoods adjacent to the 210 freeway.  The critical commentary and design statements emphasize the way that freeway designers (and maintenance-landscaping crews) work hard to create visual 'buffers' between the traffic and the residences.  My assumption is that the author is claiming that this visual masking of airborne toxicants (to health) and noise pollution is part of the toxicity of the 210 freeway.  The difficulty here is that the normalization of the community's relation to spaces/walkways that are freeway adjacent is reproduced (rather than exposed) by way of the photodocumentary form.