The caption informed my understanding of the image by opening (leading me to) a critical space for interogating the concepts of landscape, native, productive and their antitheses: anti-landscape, non-native (no, hybrid, compromised, contaminated?), un-productive. What struck me most was the transformation of this image into a monstrous, living (breathing), promixal place.
The caption is excellent and I learned a great deal about the image from reading it. Its focus is on anti-landscape, an idea new to me. What grabbed my attention in reading was sense of the site as a living place. I find that provocation gripping and I would suggest further elaboration and interrogation of this idea, especially in the context of a life cycle or timescape (human time, toxic time) in future work.
The image is a black and white photograph that appears to have been taken during winter. I don't know the source of the photograph. It is strangely beautiful. I read the pipes and tubes as part of a larger circulatory system. It's desolate nature (grey tone, winter, the absence of vineyards, or surrounding farmlands) and the signage ("non-native") lends the image a of sense of science fiction.
The analytic question seems to suggest that one image might be able to capture the ethnographic import of the anti-landscape being interrogated. I find the image stark, and it is this starkness that opens a space for multiple ethnographic provocations.If possible, I would love to see an aerial view of this site with a similar visual aesthetic.
This visualization challenges viewers to move beyond thinking of toxics as a designation—the closure of possibilty—toward considering (anti)landscape as living spaces. In this way, the visualization provides a critical opening, a way to develop notions of temporality within toxic worlds.
The definition of anti-landscape is interesting and novel to me. As a concept, it is applied very well to the corresponding image. The sentiment/message/argument of the visualisation and caption seems to be to point out the eeriness of toxic landscapes whereby they become unusable by humans, although they must be managed by humans; inferring a presence in the landscape, but one at a distance that allows it to be safely absent. The signpost in the image (which is highlighted in the text as elusive) draws attention to the colonial and dispossesive nature of toxic landscapes well.
As mentioned in the previous annotation, it might be nice to have more context as to the place: why is it there? Could the eerie 'non-native' sign be elaborated upon? Otherwise the caption is very thorough, and explains well the idea of anti-landscape.My only comment on the 'anti-landscape', however, is to think about landscape as something that doesn't necessarily need to be of use to humans. What kinds of things are able to use this landscape in our absence?
The image seems to be taken by the author.I like the choice of black and white as elaborated in my first annotation. It also has the aesthetic of a traditional landscape photograph, which - combined with the anti-landscape comment - offers an interesting paradox that gets the viewer thinking. The scale of attention is interesting, too.. I wonder what would be visible in the rest of this landscape in terms of the scale of the infrastructure and toxicity.
I like the image as it is. I think the caption could be improved by a brief bit of context but that is all.
There are links to my own work here on radioactivity that are interesting. I think the image highlights the importance of visualising toxic places in general due to their (often) invisibility. Here, the vast infrastructure to manage the toxicity in the landscape is only a ghostly reminder of the unseen toxicity that lies beneath it. This could be emphasised alongside mention of the way the waste beneath might have a 'semblance of life'. The absence of humans/life in the picture also suggests toxics are incompatible with life itself.
