After Image - ما بَعد الصورة
After Image brings together two archives, one digital and one personal, and continues the long-term project Pixels of Memories. The work originates from an extended search through Google Street View imagery of Iraq, where fragmented and unstable images form an unintended archive shaped by war, technology, and power.
Rather than focusing on what is visible, the project engages with absence: pixelation, glitches, erased bodies, and gaps in the image. These disruptions reveal how visibility is not neutral but regulated by technical systems that determine what can be seen and what disappears.
This visual language extends into the artist’s family archive, where damaged photographs from the Iraq war carry physical traces of destruction and loss. The project reflects on what comes after what Harun Farocki describes as ‘operational images’, shifting toward images that carry Cracks, absence, and residue.
After Image unfolds between these two conditions, where images shift from representation to fragile residues. The work reflects on how memory persists through fragments, and how the past survives as a layered field of presence and absence.
Embers of Narratives, سرديات الجمر
2023-Ongoing
In Embers of Narratives, Hameed examines the traces of destruction left by violent conflicts in Iraq. The installation consists of suspended printed fabric depicting landscapes, houses, and figures sourced from screenshots found on Google Street View uploaded by various individuals across Iraq.
Through these digital remnants, the artist revisits places marked by war, political inaccessibility, and personal memory. Using thermal paper and thermal printing techniques, Hameed burns and scorches the paper before printing the images, creating fire-like interventions that partially erase the imagery beneath blackened abstract textures.
The fire references the destruction of archives, libraries, and cultural memory in Iraq—materials lost through war and devastation. Unpredictability determines which visual fragments remain visible, disrupting and transforming the original image narratives.
Through this process, destruction becomes a metaphor for the instability of memory, historical erasure, and the cyclical relationship between devastation and renewal.
- 4x pigment print on banner textile, 91x500 cm
- 46x C-prints 103x142 cm
Through these digital remnants, the artist revisits places marked by war, political inaccessibility, and personal memory. Using thermal paper and thermal printing techniques, Hameed burns and scorches the paper before printing the images, creating fire-like interventions that partially erase the imagery beneath blackened abstract textures.
The fire references the destruction of archives, libraries, and cultural memory in Iraq—materials lost through war and devastation. Unpredictability determines which visual fragments remain visible, disrupting and transforming the original image narratives.
Through this process, destruction becomes a metaphor for the instability of memory, historical erasure, and the cyclical relationship between devastation and renewal.
- 4x pigment print on banner textile, 91x500 cm
- 46x C-prints 103x142 cm
TYPE: Softcover Swiss Binding
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2026
17 × 28,4 cm
144 Pages
ISBN: 978-88-94895-91-9
LANGUAGE: English / Arabic
PUBLISHER: Skinnerboox
Text: Hanar Hupka
Graphic Design: Anna Breit
Press
- photo-letter.com
- PHMuseum
Awards
- winner FE+SK Book Award 2026
- shortlist THE AUTHOR BOOK AWARD 2026 Arles
- shortlist Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award 2025 Arles
ABOUT
The publication Pixels of Memories بكسلات الذاكرة combines conceptual reflections on memory, destruction and the invisibility of history. The book takes up this visual language and creates a fragment of memories, image errors and gaps. It becomes a space of testimony and reflection in which viewers must decipher the layers of images and their meaning. Hameed has scoured the entire map of Iraq on Google Maps and compiled an archive of hundreds of screen shots. In Iraq, the 360-degree views are not uploaded to the platform by the company itself, but by private individuals. Hameed is particularly interested in the errors and gaps he comes across during his research.
The publication Pixels of Memories بكسلات الذاكرة combines conceptual reflections on memory, destruction and the invisibility of history. The book takes up this visual language and creates a fragment of memories, image errors and gaps. It becomes a space of testimony and reflection in which viewers must decipher the layers of images and their meaning. Hameed has scoured the entire map of Iraq on Google Maps and compiled an archive of hundreds of screen shots. In Iraq, the 360-degree views are not uploaded to the platform by the company itself, but by private individuals. Hameed is particularly interested in the errors and gaps he comes across during his research.
BROKEN PATHS
16.09.23–08.10.23 - Solo exhibition at die PutteThe exhibition BROKEN PATHS brings together four works by Raisan Hameed in which he shows fragments of his own history and thus opens up a view of complex geopolitical contexts.
The photographic series Risse shows torn pieces of wallpaper, small cracks in walls and stones. The pictures were taken in his family home in Mosul and poetically describe the beginning of a drastic change and destruction. The photographs were shown for the first time as part of his diploma thesis Zer-Störung at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. At PUTTE, they enter into an exchange with a later work Das Leiter, which deals with the still acute and sometimes deadly situation at the European border. People use ladders to try to climb over the border fence to Hungary. A loudspeaker announces in Arabic that anyone who crosses the fence without permission may be shot. The installation Déja vu shows an image of foaming water. Raisan Hameed took the photo in Bremen. In the installation, the water literally sloshes towards the visitors. For Hameed, the image represents his personal experience of flight, but as part of the artistic work it can be read from many perspectives. The artist developed a fourth work especially for the exhibition and installed it in front of the PUTTE.
All four works interlock and provide selective insights into current issues. The focus is less on the artist's personal history and more on the discussion about our present, which is changing rapidly due to political crises and is undergoing a noticeable transformation.
Curation: Elisabeth Würzl & Michael Schlecht
The photographic series Risse shows torn pieces of wallpaper, small cracks in walls and stones. The pictures were taken in his family home in Mosul and poetically describe the beginning of a drastic change and destruction. The photographs were shown for the first time as part of his diploma thesis Zer-Störung at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. At PUTTE, they enter into an exchange with a later work Das Leiter, which deals with the still acute and sometimes deadly situation at the European border. People use ladders to try to climb over the border fence to Hungary. A loudspeaker announces in Arabic that anyone who crosses the fence without permission may be shot. The installation Déja vu shows an image of foaming water. Raisan Hameed took the photo in Bremen. In the installation, the water literally sloshes towards the visitors. For Hameed, the image represents his personal experience of flight, but as part of the artistic work it can be read from many perspectives. The artist developed a fourth work especially for the exhibition and installed it in front of the PUTTE.
All four works interlock and provide selective insights into current issues. The focus is less on the artist's personal history and more on the discussion about our present, which is changing rapidly due to political crises and is undergoing a noticeable transformation.
Curation: Elisabeth Würzl & Michael Schlecht
„Ich erwartete, dass das Meer Gedichte, Geheimnisse und Briefe in Flaschenpost an unbekannte Adressen tragen würde. Ich fand es nass von den Tränen der Reisenden...“
![]()
Die Fahne, 2023-2025
Silk-Screen printing on rescue blanket
Flags, 80 x 110 cm
“I expected the sea to carry poems, secrets and letters in bottles to unknown addresses.
I found it wet with the tears of passengers...”
![]()
I found it wet with the tears of passengers...”
