As the author states: the story is not pure. The image portrays the complications of toxicity perfectly. There is a past, a present and a future to all toxic stories. The historic events that led to the beginning of toxic practices; present practices to live with toxicity and what those actions will affect what is left of the toxic environment.
More than a way to elaborate the caption, I'm curious about what happened to the place afterwards? Was the demolition a result of community decision or was it done by the company itself? Did they have concrete projects in mind for the place before the demolition? What were the projects?
I like the aesthetics of the image a lot, everything about it is “beautiful”: the light and especially the “action” in the image. There are very few times when you can capture a specific “action”. I also love the contrast between the destruction in progress and the peacefulness of the people in the canoes in the water.
I personally like the image a lot and think that it tells a clear story as is.
Toxicity is not a static thing; it is in constant change. Even when we try to put an end to a toxic way of living there are consequences that are usually unknown. There is no going back.
This image is striking in how it shows a building which is being pulled down, and is set against the water and the shoreline. The commentary shows that it is an image which is supposed to be about renewal and newer meanings of pureness, but that the story is more complicated and might not even be entirely toxic. Just reading the commentary or even just the image, I don't get that story of layered meanings. I would suggest layering some of these meanings into the image.
The ethnographer argues that the loss of the paper mill, a symbol of its industrial past should be read through the lens of how people lived with and experienced such infrastructure. The mill and the industrial past helps her think about a past that has never been "pure"--what does pure mean for the pure Muskegon campaign and how is the ethnographer's story about living with industrial infrastructure as a part of the landscape pushing against the campaign's definitions of purity? Is this to say that the industrial past was never "pure" nature?
This seems to be a found image. It is a striking image of change, which prompts questions about the history and future of the area inside and outside the frame of the image.
Told through the story of her own experience of the past, the ethnographer argues that the temporalities of the industrialization are tied to other stories of immigration, toxicity and even suggests that there are personal lived experiences that don't define the industrial past primarily as a toxic one. What are the different meanings of toxicity at work here--racial, environmental, aesthetic?
