Filmmaker and Visual Investigator at SITU Research, applying advanced digital forensics to the fields of law, journalism, and activism. Former editor at The New York Times.
Collaborators include Frontline PBS, Human Rights Watch, and The National Lawyers Guild, among others.
Contact: evangrothjan@gmail.com
Vuelos De La Muerte | Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center | Director
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the Mexican government escalated an already brutal campaign against political dissidents during la Guerra Sucia, the “Dirty War.” This fourteen-minute video presents one of the first assemblages of visual evidence showing the systematic and highly organized program of disappearances carried out by key military officials in Guerrero, Mexico during this period.
Weaving together open and closed-source research, a digital site model of the Pie de la Cuesta Air Force base - the primary scene of State abuse - was reconstructed from archival materials, declassified spy satellite imagery, and records from a 2002 military investigation. The analysis includes written testimonies from military personnel who described their active involvement in the disappearances, information from journalistic reports, and unexpected Hollywood film footage.
Widely circulated in Mexico, the film’s call to action demands the release of the full scope of the military’s archives to uncover additional aspects of the truth about this dark period of Mexican history.
UPDATE: On August 7, 2024, a list of 183 purported victims of The Death Flights was released.
Beneath the Rubble: Documenting Devastation and Loss in Mariupol | Human Rights Watch | Senior Researcher
Human Rights Watch, SITU Research, and Truth Hounds collaborated to document the aftermath of Russia's assault on Mariupol, aiming to promote accountability for the perpetrators, preserve the city’s history, and strengthen advocacy against the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
To convey the human-scale impact of the city’s destruction, case studies of damaged and destroyed buildings across Mariupol were selected based on interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch. First-person perspectives were visualized using videos scraped from social media, 3D site models were reconstructed by aligning these videos in architectural software, and advanced animation techniques assured a unified narrative to the larger story. Article HERE.
Sow, et al. v. City of New York, et al. | National Lawyers Guild | Senior Researcher
Thousands of civil rights demonstrators protested police brutality in New York City during the George Floyd protests of 2020. Over several months, the NYPD responded with widespread force. In response, the National Lawyers Guild formed the BLM/Floyd Litigation Task Force to file a class action lawsuit against the City of New York. During court proceedings, the NYPD provided over 6,000 video assets through Discovery, including body cam and helicopter footage, along with documentation from protesters. These materials served as evidence to identify four types of constitutional violations: improper use of batons, improper use of pepper spray, excessive force, and kettling.
The most abstract of these violations, kettling, is a crowd control tactic in which police form lines around protestors to restrict movement - the NYPD denied deploying its use. As Senior Researcher, my focus was on visualizing kettling to prove NYPD not only employed the tactic, but did so as part of a wide strategy. The work began with a review of flagged incidents in a spreadsheet of the discovery materials, which was expanded through open-source research to identify potential kettling events. In the end, four kettles were selected for deeper analysis. Hundreds of additional videos from the discovery materials were then reviewed, with select clips geolocated by their locations and timeframes to build out a case file for each event. Kettling is difficult to prove and easy to dismiss, as it is not a single action but a coordinated strategy. The footage, first-person and chaotic, was insufficient on its own. Mapping the videos in relation to one another became necessary to show how formations of protestors were trapped by formations of NYPD officers.
Using New York City’s open 3D model, a digital twin of the city was constructed to place each video in spatial context, based upon visible markers like storefronts, intersections, and landmarks. This enabled visualization of each kettling event from a bird’s-eye perspective. A four-channel synchronized video was then produced, showing footage from the North, South, East, and West. Time-aligning the videos shows the kettles unfolding from all angles, illustrating how officers coordinated their movements to trap protesters. The video was paired with the map to maintain spatial context, emphasizing the weaponization of the built environment and that there was no room to escape.
Helicopter footage from two additional kettling incidents, capturing the NYPD formations from above, further substantiated the use of kettling. The NYPD settled out of court.
The Chain of Failures that left 17 Dead in the Bronx Fire | The New York Times | Graphics/Multimedia Editor
On January 9, 2022, a fire in a Bronx high-rise claimed the lives of 17 New York City residents. None of the victims died from burns; all succumbed to smoke inhalation, many from several floors above the fire’s origin. A New York Times investigation - drawing on floor plans, witness videos, 911 calls, and city documents - traced the smoke’s path from ignition to containment over two hours later. The investigation revealed a building constructed before modern fire safety codes, lacking sprinklers or automatic fail-safes, and reliant on a containment strategy that failed catastrophically.
As a Graphics Editor, my role was to translate the complex, fast-moving event into a clear and effective story. Closely following the reporting, the building was virtually peeled back layer by layer, using transparency and camera movement to guide the viewer through the sequence of events in a moment-by-moment retelling. The concept of using smoke simulations as tools for data visualization had first been tested in coverage of the Dixie Fire, where HoudiniFX was used to simulate how wildfires, supercharged by climate change, were generating their own weather systems. When the Bronx fire occurred, editors recognized the opportunity to apply a similar approach.
The Times partnered with engineering experts from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, using a Fire Dynamics Simulator to model how smoke rose rapidly through the stairwells, turning them into vertical chimneys. The result was the newsroom’s longest and most immersive 3D visual, demonstrating how smoke, not flames, became the deadliest factor.
The story went on to become a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. The article can be found HERE.
In The Garden | Personal
