Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The portrait is central to Fazal Sheikh's work. For more than two decades, as he has worked in different communities around the world, the invitation to sit for a portrait has been one of the principle means by which he has established a link with his subjects and been allowed to enter and document their lives. Often these have been people in crisis: displaced from their homes and their countries, at risk from violence, poverty and prejudice. This book takes in the full range of Fazal Sheikh's work, from his earliest portraits taken in African refugee camps, through long-term projects in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan, Somalia and Kenya, to more recent work in South America and in India. It considers the role of the portrait within this kind of social enquiry: the balance of its aesthetic and narrative qualities, its capacity for empathy and also for distance; the values of the collaborative portrait, and the moral ambivalence that surrounds this approach to documenting the lives of disadvantaged people within the context of contemporary art.
About the Author
Fazal Sheikh was born in 1965 in New York City. His previous books include A Sense of Common Ground (Scalo 1996), The Victor Weeps (Scalo 1998), A Camel for the Son and Ramadan Moon (International Human Rights Series 2001), and Moksha (Steidl 2005). His work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, London; the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Paris; the International Center of Photography and the United Nations, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow. His photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, George Eastman House, Rochester, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
His awards include the International Henri Cartier-Bresson Grand Prize, the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, the Prix d'Arles, and the Leica Medal of Excellence. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2005 Sheikh was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Sheikh is represented by Pace/ MacGill Gallery in New York City.