Beautiful Berlin Boys

For Iranian-American photographer Ashkan Sahihi, New York City in the 1980s epitomized refuge and protection, progress and opportunity. But the community was soon shaken by HIV and AIDS, and numerous friends and colleagues from the art scene lost their lives. In the 2010s in Berlin, it appeared to Sahihi that Berlin had replaced New York as a place of longing. Sahihi's conceptual series is an homage to friends of days past and a plea for the privilege of living a life in freedom and openness, as well as for tolerance and a sense of belonging.