A photograph entitled Euphoria, 2010 by the award-winning Palestinian artist Steve Sabella is one of the highlights of Bonhams’ first dedicated Photographs Sale, which takes place in Dubai at the One & Only Royal Mirage hotel on 13 April 2011. Part of his internationally acclaimed Jerusalem: In Exile project, which explored the mental image Palestinians hold of Jerusalem, it has attracted a pre- sale estimate of $14,000 – 18,000.

Sabella has won numerous awards, including the Ellen Auerbach Award in 2008. In the same year, he was shortlisted and exhibited in the Terry O’Neil Award of Contemporary Photography. He is collected widely in the Middle East by the likes of Cuadro Fine Art in Dubai and the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah.

Another important lot in the sale is an enormous seven-part photo collage by Lebanese artist Camille Zakharia entitled Cultivate Your Garden, 1998, which has attracted a pre-sale estimate of $30,000 – 40,000. Known for his autobiographical photo montages, collages and black and white prints, which document the journey he has embarked on since he left Lebanon in 1985, he has commented: “Life is a series of still images. It is a collage of events. Sometimes the collage makes sense. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

Other sale highlights include Sebastiao Salgado’s Without Daylight, Oil Wells, Kuwait, 1991 (estimate $6,000 – 7,000); Lillian Bassman’s Park Avenue Woman, 1954 (estimate $5,000 – 6,000); Armet Ertug’s The Library of St Florian Abbey, Austria, 2009 (estimate $35,000 – 40,000); and Horst P. Horst’s Coco Chanel, Paris, 1937 (estimate $7,000 – 9,000).