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This image is rich in ethnographic import. As a documentary image, I do not know how I would enrich it. 

The visualization situates an abandoned playground as symbol at the fulcrum of temporalities in order to highlight the automotive industry's impact on community life. This image represents the toxic present based on corporate promises of an American Dream that collapsed. I am curious and hopeful about the possibility for independent future visions pointed to in the caption. 

We tend to think that we learn from our mistakes, but history has shown us that we don’t.  This image reminds me of Kim Fortun’s approach to late-industrialism, but at the same time seems to suggest a return to the “industrialist” economic model. It points to the tension between economic realities, toxicity, global politics, the concept of (re)development, among others. In this case, a paternalistic corporation was good at making people dependent on it.

Changes don’t come easy and I’m sure that it’s hard to get out of this model of dependence.  The author states that residents are more aware of toxicity in their lives. I would love to know what residents are doing to reflect their awareness. What kinds of toxicity are they exposed to? Is there a history of cancer in the community for instance (I’m thinking about Christine Walley’s work here) Is the community doing something to become less dependent on corporations or are there no alternatives?

It is an image created by the author that portrays toxicity in a very graphic way.  This is what we expect to see when we hear the words toxicity, it’s almost a cliche.  A destroyed playground in a dry landscape with leafless trees in the background perfectly represents toxicity.  But in this particular place it also lets us know that once there were families and children there.

The photo itself says a lot.  I think it would be interesting to have a smaller size image collated to this one, with the new factory in the front and the same old playground at the back, making the “whose development” statement even stronger.

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This seems to be an image created by the ethnographer based on screen shots of the Atmotube reading of air pollution, juxtaposed with a photograph taken by the ethnographer of pollution in the area. It is striking to see the pollution measure say "Air is good" when there is a picture of a hazy street right next to it. As such the image calls attention to different modes of visualizing toxicity--seeing a place and knowing it through quantified measure of VOC and seeing through immediate observations of one's surrounds.

Looking at the juxtaposition of images in this visualization, I could see immediately that the atmotube reading said the air quality was good. But I had to read the caption closely to "see" that the photographs were showing pollution, as opposed to just a chilly and foggy morning. The photographs in particular resist an easy reading of the situation, and could in fact make a case for going beyond the visual (whether via the atmotube or the photos).

I would suggest thinking more about the role played by visualizations in the ability of ethnographers studying air pollution "to know but not to find". Both atmotube and the photos visualize air pollution in specific ways and resist "finding" evidence of it, even though residents or the ethnographer knows it exists. What is the stuff that allows the ethnographer to know--sensory experiences, for instance? The question could then become "To sense but not to see" just as much as it is about "to know but not to find"?