Photographer Fazal Sheikh

Julius Honnor reviews photographer Fazal Sheikh’s book Moksha, the fourth part of his International Human Rights series.

Half-formed figures emerge faintly from misty landscapes. Wrapped in plain cloth, they scurry away along dirty streets. On double-page spreads, trees slowly disintegrate into the hazy background. Faces stare straight out of the pages, mournful and marked by years of pain.
The fourth part of Fazal Sheikh’s International Human Rights series is Moksha, a hefty and powerful book of photos and text looking at the lives of widows in the town of Vrindavan in Northern India.
Sheikh’s first two projects in the series were books, A Camel for the Son and Ramadan Moon, concentrating on women refugees from Somalia living in Kenya and Holland. The third was a DVD based on his book The Victor Weeps, a study of Afghan refugees. The fourth, Moksha, confronts the plight of Vrindivan’s dispossessed widows.

                                          >>>Fazal Sheikh