Finding Refuge: Fazal Sheikh’s three projects

Abstract

Fazal Sheikh presents himself as a contemporary photographer seeking personal and global answers through bringing awareness to various Middle Eastern stories. Sheikh has become the ultimate humanitarian artist. With his compassionate images, he encourages his viewer to not forget that these are families, just like ours, that are struggling. His photographs achieve a delicate balance between photojournalism and fine art photography. Sheikh's style is a refreshing break from mainstream agency photographs that flood the media. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sheikh's father was born in Kenya, and his grandfather in a section of India that is now designated as Pakistan, so part of his journey is to seek his own ancestral history. As he is drawn to a region, a religion, and a way of life that is unfamiliar to him, Sheikh provides a body of work that is presented in such way that only one with his namesake can be given access to. With the grace of Allah/God (the meaning of his name) he collaborates with the Swiss-based Volkart Foundation and the International Humanitarian Fund in his series of books. A Camel for the Son, Ramadan Moon, and A Victor Weeps. All of these publications have been distributed, the majority free of charge, throughout global institutions concerned with human rights, cultural and non-government organizations. In addition, the full text and photographic spreads of these projects can be downloaded from www.fazalsheikh.org to enable further access to his work. A few of the many recognitions Fazal Sheikh has received include: the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, fellowships from the Mother Jones International Documentary Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts and, in 1994, he was named by the New York Times as an artist under thirty most likely to change the culture in the next thirty years. A Camel for the Son Formats for the books, A Camel for the Son and Ramadan Moon are small in size but vast in content and sensitivity to the horrors of war. Its modest packaging gives it a sense of mystery, the plain black covers beckoning for readers to enter into Fazal Sheikh's photographic vision. This book is a product of Sheikh's ten year involvement with Somali refugee villages in northeastern Kenya. It gives viewers a genuine view of Somali women and at the same time validates their existence in a time when their stories are smothered with silence. A Camel for the Son opens with glistening black and white two-page spreads of small housing units, clustered together with make-shift cloth roofs, they create patterns of deterioration that repeat towards the horizon. After several pages, the reader learns the location of these landscapes--they are taken from a water tower in Kenya, looking east towards the Somali border. To a Western eye, these images could have been taken in so many different parts of the world. With the images in this book, Fazal Sheikh brings a specific awareness to the plight of victims of the civil war in Somalia: a conflict that has lasted ten years and taken an estimated 350,000 lives. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sheikh dedicates this particular book to the women and children of Somalia, for their plight's lack of exposure and for their continued sufferings of displacement, sexual assault, and unmet basic human needs. The first chapter begins with a series of photographs that deprct women and their malnourished children. Sheikh spent several weeks at a feeding center run by Doctors Without Borders, an organization who spends months nursing the children back to their normal weight. The children and mothers, a great majority children themselves, look out from the pages with wide eyes that combine pain with great hope for survival. A Camel for the Son continues not only with stories, but portraits with a quiet sensitivity that speak of cycles of rape, shame, and being forced to flee from one's native land These women's stories become increasingly poignant when the reader learns of their immediate persecution once they voice their victimization. …