This project began from my interest in the 1920s, a decade of freedom, upheaval, and fleeting possibilities. I was drawn to the energy of a world reinventing itself after the collapse of empires, when old rules faltered and new forms of life, especially queer lives, found space to exist. My fascination was not only with its glamour, but with the hidden and visible ways people lived, loved, and expressed themselves in this moment of transition.
I focused on Berlin and Istanbul, two cities shaped by defeat, migration, and reinvention. Berlin, during the Weimar Republic, became a stage for radical art, nightlife, and queer expression, where gay men could appear publicly, perform identity, and create communities. Istanbul, in the early years of the Turkish Republic, was more coded and layered, a city of encounters shaped by occupation, reform, and waves of migration, including Russian émigrés after the Russian Revolution, which added cosmopolitan energy and spaces for difference to flourish.
Rather than relying on historical photographs alone, I used AI to imagine what cannot be fully recorded. Many images focus on queer men moving through cafés, streets, and interiors, exploring desire and identity in spaces both public and private. AI allowed me to reconstruct these missing moments, translating research, fragments, and imagination into a visual experience.
Figures like Josephine Baker in Berlin capture the city’s daring, performative freedom, while in Istanbul, Frederick Bruce Thomas reflects its cosmopolitan and transformative social life. Together, these cities reveal different expressions of a decade in which queerness, migration, and modernity collided.
With this project, I trace the link between past and present, history and technology, and what was lived, hidden, and now imagined.
