Abstract of the accomplished photographic work
Silent Hero is a visual research project exploring the absence of memory and the aftermath of war through my grandfather’s untold experiences in WWII. Grigoriy Lipkin fought from Moscow to Berlin, liberated Auschwitz, and lost most of his family—yet he never spoke of it. After his death, I received his medals but not his memories. Using photography, machine learning, forensic imaging, and archival research, I trace his path and investigate the fate of his brother Naum, killed near Stalingrad in 1941. I found no grave, only a void. The project questions how technologies shape memory, and what it means to document absence. Working with orthographic film, veterans’ testimonies, and GPS-coordinated field surveys, I seek to visualize the silence inherited across generations. Silent Hero includes a book (Seeing Against Seeing), a graphic novel (17.VII.44), and a short film (No One is Forgotten), each grappling with the limits of representation and historical proximity.
Description of the project you intend to pursue through the Prize
Time is Money explores landscapes shaped by income disparity and the disappearing visibility of labor. Referencing Daguerre’s 1838 image—where only a man getting his shoes shined appears, still long enough to be seen—I use time as photographic exposure and a measure of economic value. I ask workers: How long does it take you to earn one dollar? That duration determines my shutter speed. I photograph people while they are working; those who earn more appear clearly in short exposures, while those earning less blur or vanish—leaving only the environment behind. The image becomes an index of inequality: presence tied to wage. Traveling across the U.S., I use large-format photography, interviews, and fieldwork to document how labor produces landscape—through logistics, maintenance, extraction, and service—and how these spaces obscure the bodies that sustain them. The project examines how value becomes visible—and who is allowed to leave a trace.