Drawing on the iconography of missing children on milk cartons, artist Abbey Hepner’s milk bottles convey her own haunting family portraits. Dairy for the Downwinders uses liquid emulsion to depict the artist’s ancestors, who lived and worked on a dairy farm in Nevada, near where 928 nuclear tests were carried out in the desert between 1951 and 1992. The images poignantly juxtapose milk’s supposed nurturing quality with irrevocable nuclear harm. “Through a fusion of personal archive, political history, and experimental process, [the series] examines the intergenerational health, memory, and cultural consequences of nuclear fallout,” writes Hepner. “It situates private grief within a broader national legacy that remains unresolved.” Tara Joshi
Abbey Hepner is shortlisted for the professional competition,Sony world photography awards 2026, exhibition at Somerset House, 17 April-4 May; worldphoto.org
