Photographer based in Los Angeles, CA & Berlin, Germany
Abdulhamid Kircher, portrait of the photography
Tell us about yourself, what's your background?
I was born in Berlin to German and Turkish parents, and immigrated with my mother to New York City at the age of eight. My introduction to photography was through Tumblr in 2011. I purchased a digital Canon camera to have my mom take photos of me or of my friends hanging out in the city, which I would then upload to Tumblr. I would roam the streets after school and by always having the camera on me, I naturally began taking photographs of random things I saw and eventually strangers. But it wasn’t until a friend of mine let me borrow his Yashica film camera that I realized photography was what I was meant to do.
Untitled, from the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2024.
"I’m inspired by my family, my partner, music, anything that I’m surrounded by honestly. Inspiration comes from the people I love, seeing the way they move, the way they talk, their tendencies, the way they go about life."
Untitled, from the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2024.
What are you currently working on and where did the inspiration for it come from?
I’m actually not shooting for a specific body of work at the moment, which feels a bit weird since my focus has always been on the image making process. I’ve made a handful of projects over the past decade and finally have the physical and mental space to flesh them out. This includes making contact sheets of every roll of film, making selects, printing selects, creating an edit from those selects, and ultimately attempting to understand how this work can physically live in the world.
Untitled, from the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2024.
Studio view
Innovation does not only happen in the field of technology — it occurs everyday in a creative practice. What do you do for inspiration?
I’m inspired by my family, my partner, music, anything that I’m surrounded by honestly. Inspiration comes from the people I love, seeing the way they move, the way they talk, their tendencies, the way they go about life. My brain goes in and out of the hunger of wanting to make photographs. Working on the “Rotting from Within” book and exhibition for the past year has sort of killed my drive of wanting to make an entirely new body of work. Going through my extensive archive made me realize how much work I’ve already made in the last decade just for this project alone. I have so many other bodies of work that I haven’t even begun to deal with yet.
Describe your practice and process. Where do ideas start for you? In the studio or being in the world?
What I’ve come to realize is that everything around me is all I need in order to make photographs. I spent a lot of time early on focusing on people I met in the street and digging further into their lives. But photography has become such an extension of myself and the way I process the world around me, that now it’s difficult to make work about anything that isn’t close to me. Photography is inherently problematic in many ways; I no longer really feel comfortable making work about things that don’t resonate with my way of seeing the world. It too easily falls in and out from under the guise of documentation. I do miss the purity and obliviousness of my younger self, that allowed me to take photographs of anything and anyone I encountered without really giving it much thought.
How do you make your work, does it start with a sketch?
I don’t think that I have a specific aesthetic style per say. The world opens up visually in different ways depending on which camera I use. I remember going to the LA River with my Olympus Pen-F Microscope for the first time, wearing waders and gloves, and pulling out garbage and unknown substances from the water, to photograph them on site. I sat in the beaming sun trying to figure out how to work this ancient microscope and camera, and being mind blown by everything I was seeing come to life – insects, organisms, etc. By this point I had already been making abstract photographs of the river but this allowed me to dig even further into textures and materials I was drawn to. Living in this new city and not really knowing anybody, I found myself continuously and ritually returning to the river to go on long walks. It felt fulfilling to make work of something so stagnant in a way, as all the years prior I had spent photographing people.
Many artists live by their routines, do you have your own rituals inside and outside of the studio? What does that look like for you?
I surround myself with music and my partner, Zoe Bullock. Naturally, while shooting I become hyper focused on something from one specific angle/viewpoint, and by her having worked with me so much over the past five years, and then in helping me curate my show and editing my book and archive, she understands how I see certain things. So there will be times where she points out an interesting frame that I may potentially want to approach the scene from. Other than her, I like to just be alone when making photographs. Music is the other thing I’m really passionate about but have no desire to make. Which allows me to just love it for what it is. I have a complex relationship with photography because (since) it has caused a lot of inner destruction over the years, taking over my brain, often taking precedence over my mental health and sometimes even my relationships.
Untitled, from the series Rotting from Within, 2014-2024.
Installation view
Are there books or films that are an important source of inspiration?
I used to read and write a lot, but recently my brain has been having trouble retaining anything I read, so I am constantly having to reread pages/excerpts, which makes the whole experience very tedious. Zoe usually gives me books she thinks I would like, the most recent one being “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler. The first book she gave me that really influenced my way of thinking was “Água Viva” by Clarice Lispector. This idea of pulling and pushing the reader into ways of understanding and the next moment being completely lost, resonated with how I want to put together my photographs. Photography can become easily consumable and I think that idea has always scared me.
Installation view of solo exhibition "Rotting from Within" at carlier | gebauer, Berlin, Germany, June-August 2024. https://www.carliergebauer.com/exhibition/rotting-from-within/
How will Innovate Grant contribute to your practice?
Grants like this allow me to survive off of my craft without having to invest my energy and mental health into other avenues of making money with photography.
Rotting from Within Book published by Loose Joints, 224 pages, June 2024. https://loosejoints.biz/products/rotting-from-within
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
My younger self would always ask artists, “When do you know that you’re done with a project?” And they’d simply respond by saying, “you will feel when you’re done”. This idea seemed so foreign and distant at the time, but has now come to make so much sense.
Rotting from Within Book published by Loose Joints, 224 pages, June 2024. https://loosejoints.biz/products/rotting-from-within
Stay up to date with Abdulhamid Kircher
Website abdulkircher.com
Instagram @kircherabdul