The caption suggests archive as a place—yet it does not develop the idea. Why is it a place? What kind of place? How is the image inviting viewers to see it as such? Are we talking about a particular material archive (e.g., a particular Californian archive)? Or archive as a historical figure?I like the idea, and the image is evocative – but the caption needs to do more work.
There is no information on this aspect. I suspect that this image was taken by the author. I like the composition: the tension between a full and empty space, clean and dusty... I also feel that the image suggests that the boxes of documents produce a clearly defined path… It also reminds me of images that I have seen that refer to cold cases.On boxes, archives and (a)historical events: Marisol de la Cadena’s book, Earth Beings. She has a wonderful chapter on this: Story 4: Mariano’s archive. The eventfulness of the ahistorical.
It is a powerful first image for the photo essay, and I like the image as it is, yet the caption needs to do more work.
The image itself is not explained, but by now in the essay, I assume it is an idealized version of the university's image of itself: clean lines, modern, light/white-filled open space where people work or walk and talk through a thoroughfare of protected intellectual space. The text juxtaposes two quotes from the adminstration: one that idealizes a benevolent relation to the broader community and another that describes the incarceration of alleged gang members from this broader community.
I think the caption should introduce this image, where it exists within the university of itself, and do a little interpretive work that then can help us digest the relation of this space to the chosen quotes and subsequent description. As it stands now, the viewer is not totally sure how the image relates to the text and has to do some guesswork. I would also like to see the "toxic" element a little bit more.
It's not clear where the image comes from-- it looks like it would appear on a brochure or a website-- definitely promotional. I'm guessing it was not taken by the ethnographer. These would be interesting details. The aesthetic is interesting-- some of the elments I mentioned in the first comment-- and I would like this ethnographer to provide me some interpretation of the aesthetic and why this image illustrated best the argument they are making.
I think the image is good as is, just more connection to the caption.
The visualization argues that the relational form of Columbia university to its surrounding community is toxic. The terms for unpacking this include "restriction" "policing" "dangerous" "disposable" and "useful"-- so here toxicity is configured around spatialized policing and exclusion, coupled with strategic, idealized, and controlled inclusion. I think the author could takes this further and create a really intriguing conceptualization through toxicity here... the dots just need to be conencted. The inclusion/exclusion simultaneity seems key.
The image, a newsletter from the 1950s, shows us the detail with which certain spaces propogated specific communities to invest in certain futures. Strinkingly, the newsletter ties up the quality of (social, public) housing with "WHO" lives in it, and there is little room for ambiguity in the depiction that accompanies the text: blond-headed white children.
Both the caption and the image address the divisive production of space. But the image actually goes further than the caption : by defining a given population (one with white children) as desired for bettering the neighborhood, it negatively frames the current population as blight-causing ; through presenting whiteness as a remedy, the image is actually about the toxicity of blackness. The caption, on the other hand, could be more explicit, and mention outwarldly the category that is enforced through the divisive production of space : blackness.
