For more than a decade, American artist Fazal Sheikh has worked with African and Afghan refugees to spread awareness of international human rights issues. Fazal Sheikh: A Camel for the Son · Ramadan Moon · The Victor Weeps presents three series of photographs portraying refugees from Somalia and Afghanistan. Sheikh documents displaced communities and their experiences by collaborating with them over long periods in the creation of formal portraits and landscapes. By using his subjects’ names as titles, bearing witness to their traumatic experiences as well as their hopes, and disseminating his work as activist art rather than photojournalism, Sheikh challenges the anonymity and clichés of massmedia representations of refugees. The resulting photographs and texts are respectful, graceful meditations on human gazes, gestures, and beliefs. They assert the dignity of those pictured while broadening our vocabulary for understanding ongoing global conflicts. These three series, which span Sheikh's career, were also in part initiated through his pursuit of his familial heritage in Kenya and Pakistan. Fazal Sheikh: Shahzada
Shahzada