The New York-based photographer Abdulhamid Kircher, 28, took this picture of his father’s girlfriend, Dilo, in Istanbul. For much of his childhood, spent in Germany and the US, Kircher was estranged from his father – who served time in prison for drugs offences and attempted murder – but they were reacquainted when he was 15. For a decade or more after that Kircher photographed the people and places in his father’s wayward life.

In this picture, he explains: “Dilo is getting her hair dyed in a salon we went to almost every night for two weeks. My father and the owner of the salon were upstairs, smoking weed and snorting cocaine. We were staying with Dilo’s father in his apartment, so coming to the salon was a way for them to escape and continue their Berlin lifestyle, doing drugs as they pleased.”

Nearly all the images in Kircher’s book, Rotting from Within, have this kind of raw autobiographical edge. They see him examining his place in his father’s world, and retracing the traumas that were part of his legacy.

Using his camera, he became fascinated with the experiences that had shaped three generations of his family, in particular the effect of his grandparents’ uprooting themselves from rural Turkey to seek a new life in Germany. The challenges of assimilation led to violence: “My father and his siblings were the first generation to be raised in Berlin,” he said in one interview. “Moving to such a complex city, I am sure, was very overwhelming for my grandparents. They didn’t really know how to keep everything in control, especially their kids.”

Kircher’s father was never told that he was loved, or taught to deal with his frustrations. “Most of the people in my life,” Kircher says, “especially the men, never learned to speak about their feelings or struggles.” His book finds a visual language to excavate some of those layers of denial.

• Rotting from Within is published by Loose Joints (£48)