Finding a Father Figure: Exploring Estrangement Across Borders

Join Aperture and the British Journal of Photography for a conversation between artists Diana Markosian and Abdulhamid Kircher moderated by writer and editor Dalia Al-Dujaili. In Markosian’s Father (Aperture, 2024) and Kircher’s Rotting from Within (Loose Joints, 2024), both artists contend with complex family histories through intimate and observational photographs.

Born in Berlin, Kircher left for the United States as a child, leaving his father behind. Only later, when he was seventeen, did he become more familiar with his father’s life in Turkey and Germany. Rotting from Within chronicles Kircher’s summers in Berlin, documenting a new relationship with his father and, slowly, his disillusionment with him. In her first book, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), Markosian recreates the story of her family’s journey from post–Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s. Father presents the photographer’s journey to another place and time, in an attempt to piece together an image of a familiar stranger—her long lost father.

This public program is free and open to all. A recording of the event will be made available after the live event.

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Dalia Al-Dujaili is a British-born Iraqi writer, editor, and producer based in London and is the online editor of the British Journal of Photography. She writes about creativity from the Southwest Asian and North African region and its diaspora. She’s the founder of The Road to Nowhere magazine and author of Babylon, Albion: A Personal History of Myth and Migration and has written for The Guardian, Dazed, GQ, Aperture, Atmos, Service95, and more.

Abdulhamid Kircher is an artist from Queens, New York. He was born in Berlin to German and Turkish parents and immigrated with his mother into the United States at the age of eight. His work is a living archive of place and people while also a dedication to the language, mechanics, and aesthetic possibilities of photography. He received his BA in culture and media from the New School and his MFA in visual arts from the University of California, San Diego. Kircher currently lives and works between Berlin and Los Angeles.

Diana Markosian is among the leaders of a new generation of photographers and lens-based artists advancing documentary storytelling through image-making. Her photographs have been published in Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The New Yorker. Her work is represented by Galerie les filles du calvaire, Paris. The artist’s acclaimed first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), was selected as one of the top books of the year by Time and the Museum of Modern Art Magazine. She holds an MS from Columbia University in New York.

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Image: Abdulhamid Kircher, from Rotting from Within (Loose Joints, 2024)