I wanted to photograph the moment after the ledger closes for the last time — but before anyone admits it. The Nivkh and the Galicians both built their identities around fish that have since vanished or retreated, both peoples fluent in the grammar of marine accounting. That ledger she holds isn't a prop; it's a prosthetic. The rectangular voids in the linen aren't absence — they're the load-bearing walls of her continued existence. I chose sturgeon membrane because it still carries light, still functions as shelter, even though the animal that produced it exists now only as material. That's the brief exactly: not mourning, but continuing to use what remains. — Lux