Come Get Your Honey

Kehrer Verlag, June 2021 · ISBN 978-3-96900-031-1

Come Get Your Honey was made with queer, trans and gender-nonconforming refugees and asylum seekers in Berlin, over three years of shared time. It began with a question I could not put down: what if photography is more about listening than seeing?

Nearly fifty people are behind the work, and around fifteen of them are portrayed in the series, which mixes visibility and anonymity. Some collaborators chose to be seen, others chose not to be, and the book holds both choices with equal weight. The portraits sit next to photographs of Berlin itself, keeping the city's openness and its harshness on the same pages.

The title comes from Robyn's track “Honey.”

I wanted the book to be a small universe, not a portfolio. It has an introduction, an outro, an interview, and two QR codes that open a voice recording and a video. It is portable and finite, and unlike a feed it lets you move at your own pace.

The object

• Half-cloth hardcover, 19 × 24 cm
• 144 pages, 75 colour illustrations
• One voice recording and one video, via QR codes
• Design: Kehrer Design (July Mollik) with Samet Durgun
• Language: English

Contributions

• Essay by Amrou Al-Kadhi
• Essay by Marianne Ager, Curator for Photography and Film, Kunstmuseum Brandts
• Interview by Prince Emrah
• Dear Viewer, my acknowledgements

Each of these is here in full, as printed in the book.

Reception

• “If I remove myself from the situation, trans refugee myself, when I look at the book, I see that you want to show the viewer: ‘These people are just like you.’” — Farah Abdi, In Conversation: Farah Abdi and Samet Durgun, TGEU — Transgender Europe
• “…with respect and friendship.” — Ulrich Rüter, Book of the Month: Come Get Your Honey, Leica Fotografie International
• “…camaraderie, intimacy and respect.” — Alona Pardo, Meet the 2021 Critics’ Choice Award Winners, LensCulture
• “…photography functions like a language that can connect people and communities.” — Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Seen By #15. Nothing Ever Happened (Yet), Museum für Fotografie, Berlin

In collections

• Stanford University Libraries, Green Library Stacks, TR681 .R48 D87 2021
• Brooklyn Public Library, Call no. 779.93059 D
• Harvard Library, Fine Arts Library
• Getty Research Institute Library, General Collections, TR681.R48 D87 2021
• Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, German National Library, IDN 1225760194

Get the book

• Samet Durgun - Come Get Your Honey, Kehrer Verlag
• Samet Durgun | Come Get Your Honey (2021), Artsy