Abdulhamid Kircher

© Abdulhamid Kircher. Dilo in a taxi in Amsterdam. She is a steadfast anchor in my father's life, deeply engrained in almost all my experiences with him. From the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2022

© Abdulhamid Kircher. I’ve always grappled with the idea of this body of work feeling like a glorification of my father, especially because there is tension in regards to what role he has played in my life compared with the life my mother has been able to build for us. From the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2022

© Abdulhamid Kircher. My grandfather examining his hand after experiencing difficulty for the first time in the slaughter of the sheep. This was the sheep sacrificed for my grandfather after his aneurism. It is a moment of fragility that is rarely shown from the patriarch of the family. From the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2022

© Abdulhamid Kircher. I have very few childhood memories including my father. I often think about visiting my father in jail and the metal detector continuously going off because they couldn't find the piece of aluminum chocolate wrapper crumpled up in my pocket. I do not remember seeing him or speaking with him. He tells me stories of us spending time together when I was little; he would lie to my mother about dropping me off at school and let me stay home to play PlayStation with him. From the series , 2014-2022

© Abdulhamid Kircher. This exhibition of this project includes a metal wall filled and collaged with this archive, personal work, pages from the journal I kept, and archival family photographs/objects. The wall is anchored by a photograph of my father and I in the hospital shortly after I was born, which is the only photograph that remains of me as a newborn. All the images burst out of this one larger image and feel like a scattering of memories. On the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2022

© Abdulhamid Kircher. The fifteen framed images I have exhibited are by no means a full narrative representation of this body of work but rather each represents an element of the work. Elements such as religion, drugs, Turkey, Berlin, my father’s life, my grandparent’s lives, and their immediate relationships. On the series , 2014-2022

From issue: #17 The Graduate Issue 2022

Rotting from Within

Abdulhamid Kircher started Rotting from Within when he was reconnecting with his father, who had been incarcerated for attempted murder and selling drugs. Photographed in Berlin and Turkey, the eight-year project concerns Kircher’s struggle to define his father as a parent and an individual, process the events that put his father on his particular life path, and search for places in which he could attempt reconciliation. Tracing his father’s steps led Kircher to spend time with his grandparents in Turkey, where he went to their mosque, spent time in their country home, and shared in extended family meals, the conversations often revolving around their Muslim faith. By gaining a sense of community and building a relationship with his father, Kircher transformed his world. In accepting his father for who he was, Kircher opened the door to self-acceptance; by forgiving his father, he unburdened himself of his trauma.

Born in Berlin in 1996 to German and Turkish parents, Abdulhamid Kircher emigrated to the USA with his mother as a child and grew up in Queens, New York. Kircher received a BA in Culture and Media from The New School in 2018, and an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego in 2022. In 2019, he was part of the Little Big Man Gallery group show Coming of Age, which was exhibited internationally in six cities.

© Abdulhamid Kircher. Weighing and packaging cocaine to sell with my father. This photograph is of pre-packaged cocaine. The red plastic bags are from a local Turkish supermarket and are cut into small circles. The red circles are then placed onto a little digital scale and cocaine is slowly tapped onto the circle. Once there is enough made to last the night, we take each packet and twist it at the top like a bonbon and hold a lighter to the plastic to seal it). From the series *Rotting from Within*, 2014-2022

Thank you to Spectrum Photographic, Photoworks’ official print partner

Back to issue: #17 The Graduate Issue 2022

From issue: #17 The Graduate Issue 2022

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