Halim Al-Karim valuation
Iraqi photographer of blurred, veiled figures, shaped by years spent in hiding from military service under Saddam Hussein.
Halim Al-Karim was born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1963, spent his early childhood in Lebanon and grew up in Baghdad.
What a work by Halim Al-Karim is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
Halim Al-Karim was born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1963, spent his early childhood in Lebanon and grew up in Baghdad. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad and later at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. During the first Gulf War he refused compulsory military service and spent almost three years hiding in the desert, an experience that runs through much of what he has made since. His photographs are deliberately blurred and veiled, with faces and figures that seem to surface from behind a screen, so that each image holds back as much as it shows. His Hidden series, which he has developed since 1985, draws on Sufism, and his Eternal Love series was made on collodion wet plates with a large camera he built himself. He was among the artists chosen to represent Iraq at the Venice Biennale in 2011, and he lives and works between Denver and Dubai.
Most of his work is photographic and printed in editions, often at a large scale and mounted, so the edition number and size should be checked against the label or certificate that came with it. Photographic surfaces scratch and fade in strong light, and damage to a mounted print is hard to repair. A record of where the work was bought is the first thing a buyer will ask for.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
