The Covid Front
Brighton Beach, has one of the highest median ages in Brooklyn, positioning it’s residents most vulnerable to the Covid-19. Among many groups and generations of the post-Soviet emigres, a small community of red army World War II veterans live in this beach community. With the youngest veteran turning 94 in 2020, the community is on the verge of disappearance. Once proudly parading down the boardwalk clad in medals - the veterans are waging a battle against an invisible enemy, forcing them into hiding. These men and women have witnessed and survived the inexplicable and serve as potent reminders of the price the world paid to eradicate Nazism — just as two generations later fascist rhetoric is once more making a comeback.
I have been documenting the veterans in Brighton Beach since 2018. In March 2020, I volunteered with the Association of WWII veterans and Holocaust Survivors, delivering food packages around Brighton Beach. Out of a list of fifty individuals, thirteen were centennials. Unable to safely make new portraits, I photographed the interiors of their buildings, which have become their new battlefields.
