In “Designated Ground Zeros,” Beihua Guo’s photographs bring viewers face to face with Cold War nuclear target sites in China. Now, the University of Arizona School of Art graduate student is earning international recognition for his project featuring radioactive sepia prints.
Guo has received two honors this fall: the 2026 Grand Prix Award from Vienna’s Rotlicht Festival and an Emerging Artists for Impact Award from the International Art Project Foundation in Miami Beach, Florida. And earlier this semester, he presented his project at an exhibition in Shanghai.
The third-year MFA candidate in Studio Art will travel to Vienna in late November for the Rotlicht Festival, which selected Guo as its overall winner through an international open call for this year’s theme, “Anthropocene: Hybrid Realities.” The jury chose 20 photographers from a total of 327 submissions from 44 countries.
MFA student Beihua Guo received an Emerging Artists for Impact Award for his uranotype (top photo) documenting a site once identified as a potential nuclear target at Xiamen Gaoqi Airport in China. The work will be shown during Miami Art Week at the International Art Project Foundation’s gallery.
For the inaugural Emerging Artists for Impact Award, an independent, six-member jury selected Guo and 19 other artists from applicants representing 67 schools in the United States and abroad. One of his prints will be exhibited during Miami Art Week in early December along with an online charity auction to benefit youths.
“Beihua’s work is grounded in sustained historical research and a deep engagement with photographic processes,” said Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi, who chairs the school’s Photography, Video and Imaging program. “I’m very pleased to see his work receiving this recognition.”
The honors mark more milestones for a project that gained recognition in February 2025, when Guo placed second in the University of Arizona-wide Grad Slam competition with his presentation, “Designated Ground Zeros: Documenting Cold War Nuclear Targets with Uranium Prints.”
Guo’s project examines 368 nuclear targets in China identified by the United States Strategic Air Command in “The Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959.” Produced in 1956, the document remains the most comprehensive declassified record of Cold War nuclear targets, listing more than 4,500 coordinates across the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe.
As of September 2026, he has photographed 113 of the sites, with plans to document all 368 and publish a book.
He uses the uranotype process to create prints with uranium salts as the light-sensitive material. The resulting sepia-toned images connect the physical medium to the history of the sites and their designation as targets for nuclear destruction.
Guo’s uranotype of Zhangzhuang Airport Culture Park, Jinan, 2024 (printed 2025), part of his “Designated Ground Zeros” project.
“I travel to these identified targets across China, documenting them through photography and my printing practice,” Guo said. “Many have undergone dramatic transformations, turning from industrial sites into venues for sports, art, and recreation. These seemingly mundane landscapes are, in fact, sites marked by deep historical trauma—legacies of imperialism, Cold War tension, and China’s evolving identity.”
For this year’s Rotlicht Festival competition, Guo was among 20 photographers representing 14 countries recognized for projects exploring the shifting boundaries between the organic and artificial, human intervention and ecological vulnerability.
“What I appreciate is how carefully Beihua considers the relationship between process and subject,” Alshaibi said. “In ‘Designated Ground Zeros,’ for example, his use of the historic uranotype process becomes integral to the meaning of the photographs themselves.”
Guo’s project will be featured in the festival’s main exhibition in the Colonnade Hall at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna’s studio building. The exhibition opens Nov. 27 at the Atelierhaus of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Guo will also have a solo exhibition at Photo Cluster Vienna.
For his second honor, from the International Art Project Foundation, Guo received a $1,500 award for “2432-11807 — 8000 (AIRFIELDS). 275 (POPULATION). KAO CHI, 1956 // Xiamen Gaoqi Airport” (2026) — a 7-by-7-inch uranotype documenting a site once identified as a potential nuclear target.
In an earlier project, “Water is Thicker Than Blood” (2021-24), Beihua Guo photographed Mono Lake in Califorina and explored the history of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the California Water Wars. (Image by Xingjian Han)
His print and the other 19 award-winning works will be exhibited at the foundation’s gallery in Miami Beach, Nov. 30 through Dec. 6, during Miami Art Week. The award’s $3,500 Grand Prize went to Eva Foldy of Virginia Commonwealth University. For each Impact Award artwork sold during the online auction, the International Art Project Foundation will allocate 50 percent of the sale price to charitable initiatives benefting youths and 50 percent to the award program.
Guo grew up in Shanghai, China, and earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art and environmental analysis from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, before pursuing his MFA in Studio Art from the U of A School of Art.
“Beihua’s projects examine questions of historical erasure, labor, migration and environmental transformation, with a clear ethical commitment to the histories he investigates,” Alshaibi said. “He is an intellectually curious and ambitious student who is willing to undertake the demanding research and technical experimentation his ideas require.”
From Sept. 25 to Oct. 7, his “Designated Ground Zeros” project also was part of the Photo N.O.V.A. 2026 Shanghai exhibition, “Where the Afterglow Lingers,” at SumSum Connects in China, a show dedicated to supporting emerging lens-based artists.
An installation view of Guo’s “Designated Ground Zeros” in the Photo N.O.V.A 2026 Shanghai exhibition, “Where the Afterglow Lingers.”
“I’m grateful to have been part of this exhibition alongside 10 other artists working across photography, moving image and installation,” Guo said.
Beneath the ordinary appearances of his project’s photographs are histories of trauma shaped by imperialism, Cold War tensions and China’s evolving identity.
“As an artist, I feel a responsibility to address these pressing issues and inspire social change,” Guo said during his Grad Slam presentation. “My uranium prints may not convince world leaders to dismantle nuclear warheads or undo the history of colonialism in China. But they serve as an invitation for us all to reflect on the violence embedded in the landscapes around us. From nuclear targets in China, to the Titan missile silos here in Tucson.”
