I find this collection and collage very interesting for this primary reason: It takes charts, graphs, stat's, and other "classic" informatics, and plays with them in such a way as to both utilize as well as question the information therein. At first it seems like a collection of information in visual formats, but it is a toppling array of chaos and structural violence.
The first thing that it comes to my mind when looking at the pictures at the same time, is the domino effect. The graphs are very helpful as it guides the reader to connect negative health effects with asthma and air pollution.The image serves as starting point to talk about the implication of not having a strict policy on air pollution. However, from my own experience having a strict policy is not necessarily the best solution to address air pollution. As our current economic systems feeds and grows by producing pollution.
With this image, I can start to make the connections between TLR, asthma and health issues. In the first images the messages was not that intuitive for me. This image serves as a starting point to precisely convey how air pollution can bridge chronical diseases. I wander if the fact that the person is skinny has do to with the target audience the image is trying to reach?
These images do a great job in showing how these toxic tours take place and where they are located. There are mentions of community and community spaces, and the image of the park showcases human interaction with those spaces most explicitly. However, I wish I could see more of that contrast between spaces in which people interact daily and those spaces that are toxic. Also, what are some of the conversations around these sites?
Contradictions
I would describe the dominat genre of this imge as lanscape. It would be interesting to provide a map of these sites to give a broader picture, and then these images serve as zooming in.
As I address in my annotation on the third image in this essay, I was really struck by the scrap metal, the vegetation on the near side riverbank, and the muddy bayou. Scrap, scrub, mud: dis-orders of industry, life, and earth.My initial reaction is to conflate dis-order and disorder -- that is, to take this environment as pathological, and the environments captured in the other two photos as normative expressions of the prevailing social and economic order in Houston-Galveston.As a second-order reaction to this immediate impression, I wonder whether, thinking with e.g.
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.
The juxtaposed images don't immediately render themselves legible as "toxic" or "ruined," but I think this is part of the point. The accompanying text give the deeper history behind the two images and what the renovated Union Station has replaced. The clean architectural lines and bright colors of the new building hide the more sordid history of displacment and disposession behind the urban renewal project. These juxtaposed images thus ask the view to question what kinds of political and social maneuvers needed to happen Chinatown to transition into a different kind of space.
The juxtaposed images don't immediately render themselves legible as "toxic" or "ruined," but I think this is part of the point. The accompanying text give the deeper history behind the two images and what the renovated Union Station has replaced. The clean architectural lines and bright colors of the new building hide the more sordid history of displacment and disposession behind the urban renewal project. These juxtaposed images thus ask the view to question what kinds of political and social maneuvers needed to happen Chinatown to transition into a different kind of space.
