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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Tim Adams

The big picture: Abdulhamid Kircher reflects on his traumatic family history

From the series Rotting from Within, by Abdulhamid Kircher.
From the series Rotting from Within, by Abdulhamid Kircher. Photograph: Abdulhamid Kircher

The New York-based photographer Abdulhamid Kircher, 28, took this picture of his father’s girlfriend, Dilo, in Istanbul. For much of his childhood, spent in Germany and the US, Kircher was estranged from his father – who served time in prison for drugs offences and attempted murder – but they were reacquainted when he was 15. For a decade or more after that Kircher photographed the people and places in his father’s wayward life.

In this picture, he explains: “Dilo is getting her hair dyed in a salon we went to almost every night for two weeks. My father and the owner of the salon were upstairs, smoking weed and snorting cocaine. We were staying with Dilo’s father in his apartment, so coming to the salon was a way for them to escape and continue their Berlin lifestyle, doing drugs as they pleased.”

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