Mehmet Emir's father was one of the first so-called "guest workers" to come to Austria from Turkey in 1964. For over thirty years, he worked for an asphalt company in Strebersdorf, near Vienna, and lived in a company barracks. During his holidays in Turkey, he spoke little about his work. In the photos he sent home, Mehmet Emir saw his well-dressed father in a world "full of flowers and palaces" (M. Emir). In the early 1980s, the son himself moved to Austria, became a construction worker, and began interpreting this world very differently through his own photographs.