As someone who also is always drawn to taking photographs of signage, like you I immediately paused for the striking juxtaposition in this mural of “food security” and “pest control.” This visualization is rich because it captures a purposeful message being communicated through a mural that seems so prominently and publicly displayed that it is hard for you or even your interlocutors to ignore.
I’m curious about what the contents of the pesticides themselves are, what you research could say about the figure applying the pesticide—is this a job that exposes the body to chemicals in a harmful way? Is this a job usually done by a specialist or simply by farmers themselves?
This image is the result of the ethnographer photographing an existing visualization in the form of a public mural
The caption hints that there are other scenes portrayed on the rest of the wall which would be interesting to see analyzed. And its ethnographic import might be enriched by a small biographical sketch, if any information is available, of the artist(s) responsible for this work.
This visualization is ethnographically rich because you take a work of art that seems to be more or less a piece of political quasi-propaganda for the president's economic and agricultural goals for the country, but your framing helps us see it as a visualization not simply of progress or aspiration but a much more complicated relationship between toxics and social reproduction.
