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SoiferI VtP Annotation: Fire Landfill!

It is presently rather difficult to read much of the text on the child's poster. Perhaps there is a way to sharpen and/or zoom in on the image so as to enable viewers to get a full sense of how the narratives of fire landfill hazards are being conveyed by various parties. It may also be advisable to block out the child's name so as to protect their identity/ensure anonymity if their parents so wish.

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SoiferI VtP Annotation: Fire Landfill!

The image conveys the fact that when it comes to toxicity and governance, citizens are often responsibilized for catestrophic and dangerous situations, whether as part of slow or sudden violence. Toxicity also appears to enable social ties between groups of people, whether between the school and the U.S. Army, or the child and the Just Moms group. Each are attempting in their own ways to address the toxicity of place, but ultimately the majority of the responsibility falls on the people with the least power and resources.

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PardoDiana VtP Annotation: Fire Landfill

This image and its caption illustrate “citizen science” that, in this particular case, is enacted by a group of women and their families, who must bear not only the consequences of toxic materials in their bodies and surroundings but also the labor of making toxicity knowable and visible. Visually, the image brings attention to local kids’ engagement with the health and environmental issues produced by the landfill in their communities, alongside "adult" political maneuvers.

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PardoDiana VtP Annotation: Fire Landfill!

I would delve into the involvement of kids and youth in the environmental activisms investigated by the author.I would also unpack and perhaps connect with the previous point the "just moms" titled of the group. I would also unfold the last paragraph – which seems to condense other experiences of environmental harm and significant conceptual ideas.  What about the title? Fire landfill

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PardoDiana VtP Annotation: Fire Landfill!

This is a combined image: a poster and a letter put together by the author. While it is powerful to have the letter and the poster next to each other, since they evoke different audiences, levels of complexity, scales, and even sensorial attention, none of them is “readable.” The composition also emphasizes the poster and, if inadvertently, pushes the letter to the background.

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PardoDiana VtP Annotation: Fire Landfill!

The image and caption address the radioactive toxicity produced by a landfill and the politics of knowledge about its human and environmental impact.The question that the author explores is not how to generate knowledge about toxicity. Nor what kind of knowledge is being produced about it. Rather, the question is: on who has fallen the responsibility to create it? Who has had to bear the burden of such (scientific) work? Living amid stinks and toxic winds, mothers and their children have had to prove the toxicity that is slowly killing them. 

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PardoDiana VtP Annotation: Fire Landfill!

The poster can say a lot if the image quality was better– perhaps the author can do a bricolage between the poster and the letter. Or it would be better if the letter is removed from the visualization, referring to it in the caption or another image. The content, as well as the affective/political power of the poster, is lost as the image quality is not good.

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Rabach VtP Annotation: Archives 4

I think some of the metaphor of having to really search the photo for the settlers actually is part of the ethnographic import of the image, but another tactic could be to actually blur the home, the picket fence, and everything in the photo except the settlers, actualling landing the focus on the people themselves. This might represent what you’re trying to do with the project as a whole. So it would be a sort of reversal of what is being portrayed in the photo now.

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Rabach VtP Annotation: Archives 4

Found image. Black and white, completely old school. Different shadings. The light on the right side of the picket fence caught my eye first. Is there something unique or historical about the picket fence at this time?  The interesting thing here, too, is that the focus is on the house, not the settlers themselves. In fact, they are almost invisible in the photo. You have to really stare and search for family, which actually seems to be a metaphor for the archive at this time in general. The contributor had to really search for this photo even in the first place.  

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