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Slick

I'm somewhat uncomfortable admitting, and yet will anyway, that images like this remind me that I have much more in common with the purchasers of a service like this than I do with the working people who end up poisoned by mercury or whatever. I live in Southern California, so I know I'm exposed to all sorts of horrific pollution (in the air, surely in the water and soil too, this having been the center of aerospace research and industry for the length of the Cold War).

I just spent an awful lot of time fixating on and highlighting one of the smallest words in the image. That's because I approached the subject as a critic, hoping to prove myself by finding something unusual and unexpected to say about it. If you were to accept my reading, you might consider finding a way to zoom in on the words "Swiss quality." A callout would leave these words in small scale on one side, while blowing them up visually so viewers will not miss them.

the center of a chromatogram (if that's the right word for this) is where a sample is first placed but it becomes a blank spot as it is drawn out radially.  toxicity only becomes visible or evident in its downstream, down-time after effects.

circle of soil (circle of poison)

I want to know who is the chromatographer?  How did she learn how to make these images through this process, and why?  Does she teach people in turn?  Who are these images intended to be seen and read by?   

in contrast to the later images in this series, this one has a dull uniformity to it that I read as sick, but for all I know this is what "healthy" soil is supposed to look like when analyzed in this way.  Or it could be that whatever the agrotoxin is, it's evident in the dark blob just outside the blank center (some substance that did not move in the analysis) or in the ring toward the outer edge (a substance that moved the furthest in the analysis).  In contrast to the other (prettier) images that are patterned uniformly over the entire circular area, this one is the only one wi

I looked through the string of images and am hoping to keep a running annotation all three of them. They are beautiful. I am not certain what I am looking at, though, and whether this is part of the (analytical) point? Are these images/is this image a kernel of maize? Is it a single soil particle? Is this first image chromatically different from the other three in its muted coloring because of agrotoxins, or are the others that much more "alive" because of the chemicals? The image thus holds me in suspense.

my immediate impression is: pretty.  the radial pattern is simple and pretty, something a kid would do at a fair or as part of a simple science demonstration.  But then the commentary makes me wonder, intellectually, what am i looking at?  What chemical reactions are behind the pattern, accounting for it? What can we learn from the different colors, the different positionings of closer to or farther from the center?

the genre is chromatography, but of a  particular kind.  the material process here is actually quite interesting, and is actually much more a kind of photograph than it is akin to other kinds of chromatography; the paper is treated with silver nitrate, as photographic paper is: https://www.milkwood.net/2011/11/06/soil-chromatography-with-eugenio-gras/but that said I also read this as a kind of mandala, or similar sort of image meant to elicit or focus meditative attention