The images are mostly found images. Image 2 is an illustration of Los Angeles, with Biddy Mason's face superimposed over a large portion of the city. I am particularly intriguied by the use of scale here, and the difference between mediums. They underline your argument that our imagination of early Los Angeles is partly an imaginary, given that historical archives have erased histories such as Biddy's.
As elaborated earlier, I would like to hear more about the process of the author's creation and their personal relationship to the material.
Image 3 and its attendant caption skillfully highlights the schisms between how the city of Austin imagines itself in anti-racist terms and the lived experiences of its African American residents. Just because you say it (or in this case, show it) doesn't make it so. The visualization also demonstrates how environmental injustice continues to persist not despite of liberal narratives and praxis, but because of them.
Not really, I think the ethnographic engagements here are really powerful. However, I am interested to hear more about how people such as Kenneth come into contact with these images. Where are these presentations being made?
The image is a found one, coming from materials from the City of Austin. It's composition is notable in a few different ways, particularly in regards to its "universality." (I have come across similar presentations from the City of Houston and they look exactly the same! Do they all use the same PPT generator?)What jumps out most is the usage of yellow skin tone, similar to emojis. How does this "neutral" nonhuman color signify an erasure of certain experiences by trying to purport that we're all the same?
This image draws attention to how a discourse of how urban placemaking (and attendant marketing) is bound up with a politics of race. The image directly represents how a largely white population will be discursively linked to "best places to live". The production of place through race is arguably emblematic of how non-white populations become symbolic of 'pollution' thereby associated with the 'diminishing' of the liveability of a place. Such populations become, as Mary Douglas puts it, constructed as "matter out of place."
To be honest, I struggled with the caption. It is short and descriptive. While I previously mention relationships between populations being classified as 'pollutants' thereby there marginalisation framing the 'liveability' of a city I feel like I am imposing a reading of the image and caption .
The image is a collected one (advertisement) of a city combined a graph prepared to illustrate the racial demographics of a city. The scale of attention is broad, but I cannot help feeling that it is so broad the ties to toxicity become vague. Nonetheless, the composition does provide an opportunity to think about how race, urban placemaking, and a liveability discourse are constructed. So, the comparative nature of the image is generative, so the composition works.
I would suggest working on a way to draw into the image a trigger for generating a reflection about toxicity and how some communities are constructed as 'toxic communities' or populations as 'pollutants'. Dorceta Taylor's work might be worth using as a source of inspiration? Or Mary Douglas's work. I don't mean to be negative but I connections vague here.
In my reading, I could make a link between how the production of place through race is arguably emblematic of how non-white populations become symbolic of 'pollution'/'toxicity' thereby diminishing the liveability of a place. A comparative analysis of marketing of cities and demographics can contribute to determing the racialisation of that liveability placemaking discourse. I am not really sure how the text about climate action connects in. I find the ties bewteen the different elements in the image somewhat vague. Or I am simply missing something. Sorry.
