Samet Durgun, Come get your honey, 2021

“What if photography is more listening than seeing?” Come Get Your Honey uses this question as a compass while telling a story about the LGBTQIA+ refugee and asylum seekers in Berlin. It is the photographer’s journey of weaving bonds at eye-level with individuals through vulnerability, friendship, and joy. He goes beyond the common narratives about LGBTQIA+ and refugee communities, which tend to reduce them to their agony, either by surgically exploring their body from the “outsider gaze” or quite the opposite romanticizing their struggle. The author strives to depict each individual as a complex human being in its wholeness, trying to establish a new home in a foreign country and in an extremely polarized political climate.