Based in San Francisco, Vicki Topaz has worked as a photographer and filmmaker for the past 25 years. Since 2010, she has focused on the multimedia project HEAL! that documents veterans who are aided by service dogs to ease symptoms of PTSD. Her short documentary Veterans Speak About PTSD garnered significant public attention and was screened in 17 film festivals nationwide. Vicki’s deep, personal commitment to telling these stories is rooted in her childhood experiences with her own father, a WWII tail gunner who returned home with PTSD, which was then unrecognized. Together with filmmaker Wynn Padula, their current short documentary, BY MY SIDE tells a story of journey and return, of three veteran families guided away from the pitfalls of PTSD by their service dogs to a budding sense of hope and restoration.

Prior projects include SILVER: A State of Mind, a photographic series about women and aging that explores 52 remarkable women’s ideas and thoughts about growing older in America. SILVER was exhibited at the Buck Institute for Research and Aging and featured internationally in newspapers from The New York Times to the Times of India, and on NPR’s Forum. Vicki’s monograph, entitled “Silent Nests” (2009), depicts the first photographic investigation in the medieval dovecots of Normandy and Brittany.