Beautiful Berlin Boys

Ashkan Sahihi was born in Teheran in 1963, raised in Germany, and moved to New York City in 1987. For him and many others at the time, New York epitomised refuge and protection, progress and opportunity.
The community in which Sahihi was active was soon shaken by HIV and AIDS. Within a few short years, numerous friends and colleagues from the art scene lost their lives.
In 2013 in Berlin, he encountered young gay men who reminded him of New York in the 1980s, as well as of the search for forms of identity. It appeared to him that Berlin in the 2010s had replaced New York as a place of longing.
Sahihi's conceptual series Beautiful Berlin Boys is not only an homage to his friends of days past, it also makes a plea for the privilege of living a life in freedom and openness, as well as for tolerance and a sense of belonging.
Ashkan Sahihi has been living and working in Berlin since 2013. He shoots photographs for, among others, Zeit Magazin, The New Yorker, and Vogue. In the past few years, he has exhibited in, among others, MoMA/PS1 in New York and the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. His work Die Berlinerin (2015) is a photographic, sociological study of women in Berlin.