Neutrinos

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project © Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project © Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project View all images ↓
View all images ↓
  • Dates
    2018 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Topics Awards, Contemporary Issues, Daily Life, Documentary, Landscape, Portrait, Social Issues
  • Locations United States, Iowa, South Dakota

The fate of the Universe is governed by invisible particles. The fate of our societies is governed by invisible communities.

I heard about neutrinos for the first time during a visit as a scientist to the Fermilab outside Chicago in 2017. It was right after the unexpected election of Donald Trump. Neutrinos are the most abundant and primordial particles in the Universe. They penetrate through matter without interacting with it. Neutrinos are almost weightless, yet they tip the scales between matter and anti-matter towards the material existence of our world. In simple words, neutrinos defined the fate of the Universe.

Although the existence of neutrinos was postulated over a hundred years ago, It was only in 1956 that a lab in New Mexico proved their existence. Still, even today, neutrinos are known as ghost particles since scientifically we know they exist, but their true nature remains an enigma.

The DUNE experiment - due to be performed in 2028 - is trying to discover more information about these elusive particles and answer fundamental questions regarding the origin and the nature of our Universe. To achieve this, an artificial neutrino beam will be sent underground from the Fermilab outside Chicago to the Sanford Underground Research Facility, 1300 km away, in South Dakota.

Similar to the way the invisible presence of neutrinos governs the fate of the universe, the result of the recent US election illuminates the fate of American society governed by previously invisible, (often rural) communities.  Using the DUNE beam line as an axis, I have spent the last seven years documenting communities in Iowa and South Dakota, learning how they live and building relationships based on mutual curiosity rather than politics. The work explores this significant moment in history, blending science and documentary to draw analogies between the macrocosmos of society and the microcosmos of particle physics.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

I get stung by a bee, even in protective clothing, while I am photographing Kyle at work. Kyle sometimes doesn't even wear his suit and the bees won't really attack him. "We are friends, they know me and they won't sting". I photograph Kyle among his friends.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Solar neutrinos, produced in the sun, are the majority of neutrinos passing through Earth at any moment. About a trillion solar neutrinos pass through our bodies every second and we don’t realise it.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Abby and Chris moved from Montana and bought a ranch in South Dakota. As soon as he meets me, Chris tells me "we don't like Europeans" and he laughs. I ask him "how do you know I am European?" "Just look at your glasses" he replies . I laugh and I answer, "maybe I wouldn't like Europeans as well if I was living here”. Next day I photograph Sawyer in the arms of Abby at their ranch.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Cindy lives in a small apartment in Murdo. I tell her I also live in a flat in Amsterdam. She tells me you mean "apartment" and laughs. "You are so European" she adds. She gives me chocolate chip cookies to snack on while traveling and photographing.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Cindy's partner died of cancer some years ago. She shows me the pink gun which was a birthday present from him a few years before he died. On her left hand she has a tattoo with both their initials.

© Vassilis Triantis - Wasn't sure
i

Wasn't sure

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Joe is a cook and a minister, and full of tattoos on his arms and his legs. The tattoos on his legs are dedicated to his wife that passed away from Alzheimer's. The arm tattoos refer to religious verses but he never tattooed the word "God" or "Jesus", as "it is prohibited in the Bible to adorn your body with God's name”.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Driving through back roads and seeing these hay bales mixing with the freshly cropped land, makes me think of gigantic, sluggish neutrinos, plodding away from Fermilab to South Dakota.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Mishayla is a journalist and Sandor loves chess and pool. They know "American Gothic" by Grant Wood, and I photograph them like the painting.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Neutrinos are created in many processes and everywhere in nature; in the sun and the explosions of stars, particle decays on Earth (even a banana emits neutrinos), or in particle accelerators, where protons traveling almost at the speed of light are smashed on atoms to break them apart into other smaller particles and neutrinos.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

First direct observation of a neutrino in a hydrogen bubble chamber, November 13, 1970. The image shows an invisible neutrino colliding with a proton, resulting in the creation of a muon (μ-meson) and pion (π-meson), which leave visible trails in the chamber. This groundbreaking event confirmed neutrino interactions, providing key evidence for the existence of neutrinos (Wikimedia commons).

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Sometimes, I see imaginary, liminal traces of neutrinos traveling through, as if some kind of existential branding on the land, on the people, on everything.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Brian is passing around home made whiskey from sweet corn starch in a local fair I visit in Whittemore in Iowa. He is also making blueberry beer and he has lots of houses in the area that he hired people to tend for since there are so many. Next day we go around his ranch on horse back but Zona cannot join us as she is suffering from back injury for quite some time now.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

The man with no name says not much is happening around Greene in Iowa, and he cannot understand why anyone wants to photograph anything here. He gladly lets me take a few photos of him on the porch. He says "Go ahead and do what you want with the photos but I don't want my name anywhere though". I agree to that.

© Vassilis Triantis - During my trips I photograph several signs that strike me with contradiction or some sense of irony.
i

During my trips I photograph several signs that strike me with contradiction or some sense of irony.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Mason wants to become a scientist when he grows up. I give him a microscope for his 9th birthday. He sends me back a thank you letter. He also draws me with my camera.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Neutrinos have been compared to "ghosts slipping through the night," because they're so insubstantial and seem to barely interact with the rest of the physical world. Physicist therefore often call them “Ghost particles”. I photograph my ghost shadow in the motel I was staying in Chamberlain.

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

Jamison is working as a waiter in a restaurant in Spearfish. He studied photography and he works as a photographer as well. We spend the evening together and the next morning I take a few photos of him. We lose contact during the pandemic and when I return I see on the internet an obituary with his name, talking of his untimely death…

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

On 14 June 1956 a telegram from Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan informs Wolfgang Pauli that neutrinos had been detected from fission fragments - nearly 26 years after Pauli first postulated the neutral particle as a solution to the missing energy during beta decay (CERN archives).

© Vassilis Triantis - Image from the Neutrinos photography project
i

The midwest is often referred to as "Fly over country"; “you fly over it to reach the coast but you don’t stop there”. It makes me wonder who are the neutrinos in this narrative; the people living here, or the people passing through?

Neutrinos by Vassilis Triantis

Prev Next Close