Silent Hero.

The article focuses on an artistic and historical exploration of World War II experiences through the lens of the author’s grandfather, Grigoriy Lipkin, and his brother Naum, both Soviet soldiers. Using generative AI, archival research, family photographs, and forensic fieldwork, the author reconstructs and reimagines their wartime memories, addressing gaps left by silence and lost records—such as Naum’s disappearance during the Battle of Stalingrad. The project employs Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) trained on 35,000 WWII images to create abstract, non-glorified visual interpretations of war, while also documenting contemporary sites connected to the family’s history in Russia and Ukraine. This work investigates how technology and photography can shape memory and convey the emotional and historical complexities of war beyond traditional archival imagery. [Extracted from the article]