Abdulhamid Kircher, New Genesis © Abdulhamid Kircher 2026 courtesy Loose Joints Abdulhamid Kircher's photobook New Genesis opens with a monologue that is at once desperate and resolved: "I'm gonna be rich. I'm blessed. I'm healthy. I'm great. Let's manifest it." The words belong to Sierra Kiss, a young Los Angeles mother at the centre of the book, and they are the words of someone who refuses to go under. Taken from a spoken word video Kiss posted online, the opening is sarcastic—performing positivity she does not have, while the closing text speaks to the full weight of her situation. Together they bracket the book, and what falls between them is her lived reality.
Kircher, a Queens-born artist, met Kiss after reaching out to photograph her portrait. What began as a single encounter extended into a friendship and four years of sustained presence: he documented her experience of homelessness, addiction, domestic abuse, repeated pregnancies, and her struggle navigating American welfare systems with small children and no safety net.
Kircher's photographs move between portraits of Kiss, the domestic spaces her family inhabits, institutions she passes through, and unguarded moments of her children. The children's energy and innocence run through the book alongside their mother's exhaustion as she fights to keep them safe and cared for. The photographs trace the claustrophobic grind of her daily survival and the moments of brief relief within it, without reducing her life to its crises. The isolating nature of Los Angeles magnifies her daily challenges, as she navigates a city that is largely indifferent to her struggle without reliable support. Kircher's gaze is unflinching and empathetic, pulling the viewer into Kiss's world.
What the book also exposes is the failure of the American welfare system and how little it offers. The shelters, churches, social services and law enforcement Kiss turns to throughout the book appear chronically underfunded and largely indifferent, leaving her, like so many women navigating poverty and domestic violence, entirely without a net. Kircher's images shine a light on the violence of late capitalism and domestic insecurity, and the vulnerability it creates. Kiss's situation is not exceptional but systemic, and the title points to the new generations born into the same circumstances, the same cycles repeating.
Kiss's voice runs through the book as a parallel testimony to the photographs, giving us insight into her mental and emotional state. Selected from over 700 screenshots of her Instagram Stories, her texts move between mania and despair, faith and fury, the sinking feeling of failing her children and the basic need to be loved. They are unedited in grammar and spelling, immediate, and at times almost unbearable in their honesty: "It really does hurt when everyone just watches u fall apart"; "I've spent my whole life searching for love in the wrong places and I've almost killed myself in the process..."; "lord knows I've been trying to change my ways it's an uphill battle."
Kircher's investment in Kiss's story is informed by his personal experience, giving the work a particular weight. Growing up, he witnessed his mother endure domestic abuse, something he was too young to fully understand. Meeting Kiss, a young mother navigating similar conditions alone, he could immediately relate. In this sense, New Genesis is dedicated to mothers and to the sacrifices they make under conditions that were never designed to support them. The book's title comes from Genesis, the name of Kiss's youngest child, whose birth we witness in its pages. It points to the potential for renewal and new beginnings within the continuous cycle of survival and resilience, without losing sight of the inherited conditions the child is born into.
New Genesis by Abdulhamid Kircher is published by Loose Joints and is available here.
