Abdulhamid Kircher’s Unflinching Portrait of a Single Mother in Los Angeles

With a gaze that is both unflinching and empathetic, Kircher’s latest photo book invites viewers into Sierra Kiss’s world – a place of hardship, resilience, and survival

In New Genesis, his second book following Rotting from Within, photographer Abdulhamid Kircher continues his intimate exploration of human experience, this time documenting the life of Sierra Kiss, a single mother navigating a precarious existence in Los Angeles. 

Consisting of 144 pages, the photo book exposes the frailties of the systems meant to support vulnerable populations – shelters, churches, and social services, all eroded by chronic underfunding and restrictive policies, leaving individuals like Sierra to fend for themselves. Through Kircher’s lens, these structural failures are not abstract statistics – they are lived realities, marked by personal, intimate moments of crisis, fleeting relief, and Sierra’s daily life. With a gaze that is both unflinching and empathetic, Kircher invites the viewer into Sierra’s world – a place of hardship, resilience, and survival.

After finishing graduate school, Kircher relocated to Los Angeles from New York, a city whose sprawl can result in alienation. Longing for the thrill of photographing people in their own spaces once again, he discovered Sierra on Instagram via his partner, Zoe. Her profile quickly caught his attention, but what began as a single portrait session soon unfolded into a long-term engagement with her life. Over months and intermittent years from 2022-2025, Kircher followed Sierra through episodes of homelessness, addiction, repeated pregnancies, and domestic abuse. 

One photograph encapsulates the fragile intimacy of her everyday life: The first time Kircher meets Sierra, she is sitting with her two children, Seven and Noa, on the wooden staircase of her Koreatown apartment. Their faces frown in wary vigilance of the photographer’s presence, although Sierra’s touch offered them the reassurance to feel safe. Kircher recalls the moment vividly. “I quickly realised what sort of situation she was in. Much of the time wasn’t about taking pictures – it was taking the kids to school, to the park, simply being present.”

Another image invites us into Sierra’s interior, a deep red countertop scattered with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a Coca-Cola cup, a baby bottle, a lighter and a wooden crucifix bearing the figure of Jesus. Amid the disarray, the scene portrays the domestic intimacy of a daily lived-in rhythm.

The isolating nature of Los Angeles magnified Sierra’s daily challenges. Without reliable transportation, managing multiple children, and navigating a city that can feel indifferent to struggle, she existed in a tenuous limbo. Kircher describes the on-and-off nature of their encounters: periods of daily meetings, followed by months of absence when life intervened. Beyond personal hardship, the book reveals the failures of institutions. Churches that promised support often fell short, welfare systems offered minimal relief, and law enforcement failed to protect her from violence. “I didn’t see care – that was the biggest thing,” says Kircher. “There was a moment when her new partner harassed her, destroyed property, and the police did nothing. She couldn’t leave, and she hit rock bottom.”

Kircher’s sensitivity is informed by his own history. Growing up, he witnessed his mother endure domestic abuse at the hands of his father. He recalls a memory of childhood guilt. “My mum told me about the abuse years later, how I would occupy myself and didn’t notice it happening. Meeting Sierra, seeing a mother in the same position, stirred something connected to my past. I wanted to be present in a way I couldn’t be for my own mother.”

This personal history adds depth to Kircher’s work, but it is Sierra’s voice that animates New Genesis. The book incorporates a written selection taken from over 700 screenshots of her Instagram rants, transcribed into captions that thread through the photographs. In her words, readers encounter the rush of mania, the weight of despair, and brief moments of hope – she “yearn[s] for that sense of certainty” even as she “hope[s] that they yearn to feel the fleet of thoughts and rush of mania flowing through these veins”; she insists that “the pain cannot compare to the joy that is coming”; and confesses, with disarming immediacy, “I can’t stand how much I need U.”

These captions do more than state what we’re seeing; they structure the book’s rhythm, giving readers access to Sierra’s mental and emotional state in a way that images alone could not. Photography, inherently subjective, risks framing subjects through the photographer’s lens. By including Sierra’s words, Kircher mitigates this, allowing Sierra to speak for herself rather than be spoken for. “I don’t think I would have made this book without her texts,” he says. “Photography takes so much from people; her voice was necessary to complete the narrative.”

Yet the work is not without hope. Despite its biblical allusions, New Genesis, taken from the name of Sierra’s newborn – whose birth we witness in the book – does not linger on sin or punishment. Instead, it signals toward rebirth and renewal, a continuous cycle of survival and potential transformation. Kircher’s photographs, coupled with Sierra’s text, capture the tension between despondency and grit, between systemic neglect and human endurance. Through Kircher’s lens, systems fracture, lives unravel and recombine, and faith returns in cycles – sometimes fragile, sometimes slowly, and sometimes tempered by adversity.

New Genesis by Abdulhamid Kircher is published by Loose Joints and is out now.