ABDULHAMID KIRCHER – ROTTING FROM WITHIN

Today 11:00 – 18:00 h

In his analogue photographic and installative practice, the German-Turkish artist Abdulhamid Kircher (b. 1996) reflects on the consequences of patriarchy and violence, as well as on the search for reconciliation and closeness. He understands his work as a fragmentary, living family album. In doing so, he circles around the absence of the father, a void that becomes a canvas for longing and projection. “Perhaps I am the one who has to love him first,” says Abdulhamid Kircher.

The exhibition ROTTING FROM WITHIN welcomes visitors with a sprawling panorama of photographs, texts, and archival material. The newly developed installation, 9 meters wide and more than 2 meters high, interweaves scenes, encounters, and farewells between Berlin and Turkey, through which the dynamics of a father-son relationship gradually emerge, like pieces of a puzzle coming together. In this presentation, Abdulhamid Kircher also expands the focus to include his paternal grandfather.

The father-son constellations in the photographs speak of loneliness, addiction, violence, and injury, but also of rapprochement, intoxication, touch, and grief. Kircher’s visual language – vibrant colors, high-contrast lighting moods and emotional frequencies – intensifies the immediacy and vulnerability of his subjects. The darkroom becomes a space of reflection and experience in which memories, relationships, and personal stories come to light.

Curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, curator at the House of Photography. Curatorial assistance: Viktoria Rochambeau, curatorial trainee, House of Photography.

Accompanying the exhibition as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography, an accordion-fold booklet will be published featuring image sequences from Abdulhamid Kircher’s family archive and works from the series Rotting from Within, as well as a text by Nadine Isabelle Henrich.

Abdulhamid Kircher (b. 1996) was born in Berlin to German and Turkish parents and emigrated to the United States with his mother at the age of eight. In 2018, he completed a Bachelor of Arts in Culture and Media Studies at The New School and in 2022 earned a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego. Kircher’s photobooks Rotting from Within (2024) and New Genesis (2026) were published by Loose Joints (Marseille). He is the recipient of the Grand Prix Images Vevey and the Hamburger Bahnhof Studio Award. The artist lives in New York City and Berlin.

In collaboration with the HFBK Hamburg – University of Fine Arts, we are establishing an open black-and-white photo lab with a darkroom as part of the exhibition. The accompanying workshop program creates space for encounters, convergences, and contradictions, responding to a desire for community and materiality. The focus is on the emotional, decelerated, and reconciling qualities of analogue photography: as it emerges and fades, it opens up alternative temporalities and resistant futures.