It is a photograph taken by the ethnographer in El Vado, a neigborhood in Cuenca/Ecuador. It basically draws attention to the cars passing through a bridge, which reflects well the author's presentation of this neighborhood in the caption and within the text. El Vado, one of the main entrances to the city center, faces an intense traffic and is also home to a growing car industry.
This visualization represents El Vado as a historical entrance to the city by inviting us to think about the materiality of "such entering" today. People going to the city center via cars create a "local" pollution problem in a neigborhood by just passing through a place. We, for example, do not see pedestrians or bikes in the photo, but only vehichles work with fossil fuels (if they are not electric cars).
The caption does not directly say anything about toxics but gestures towards it through emphasizing the neighborhood as "entrance." The toxicity problem in this neigborhood is rendered visible through the representation of a car-populated area.
The caption may add another adjective to specify what kind of an entrance it is. It writes "historical entrance", perhaps, a "polluted" or "toxic" entrance"?
The author may want to say more about the other components in the image, such the bridge, stream etc..
At first glance, the image seems commonplace and its subject unclear--actually, my eye was initially drawn not to the line of cars but to the river, thinking that was the site of the toxicity in question. It is an indication, perhaps, of the ubiquity and taken-for-grantedness of the automobile in the modern world that it so often fails to inspire our attention, interest, and concern.
