Nadim Asfar Featured In The Wall Street Journal


Friend of 4, our trusted and extraordinarily talented photographer Nadim Asfar was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal article “Contemporary Middle East” by Brooke Anderson and Don Duncan.

Below is  an excerpt mentioning Nadim. To read the whole article click here.

Photographer Nadim Asfar, 34, used to make ends meet taking pictures at weddings and doing work for advertising firms, exhibiting his photographic art work only occasionally. “At my first exhibit in 2004, people resisted,” he recalls. “Galleries didn’t really have experience with photography. In 2008, we had an exhibit, and we sold all of the pieces, and in several editions.”

Today, Mr. Asfar exhibits at Espace Kettaneh Kunigk, a contemporary-art gallery that opened in Beirut last year. Whereas Beirut’s art scene has enabled once-marginal artists like Mr. Asfar to firmly enter the commercial fine-art arena, many of Beirut’s more established artists, like Jean Marc Nahas, 46, are skeptical of the huge local shifts, driven by momentum emanating from Dubai. “There are a lot of ignorant dealers making uninformed decisions,” says Mr. Nahas, whose cartoon-like black-and-white sketches break from the conceptual-art-driven trends of the new Beirut art scene. “There’s a lot of good work that isn’t exhibited.”

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