Wednesday, October 19, 2011

For Sophia Cho: (my ongoing favorite photographer list)

FAZAL SHEIKH
http://www.fazalsheikh.org/

"Fazal Sheikh is an artist who uses photographs to document people living in displaced and marginalized communities around the world. His principle medium is the portrait, although his work also encompasses personal narratives, found photographs, sound, and his own written texts. He works from the conviction that a portrait is, as far as possible, an act of mutual engagement, and only through a long-term commitment to a place and to a community can a meaningful series of photographs be made. His overall aim is to contribute to a wider understanding of these groups, to respect them as individuals and to counter the ignorance and prejudice that often attaches to them. 
Each of his projects is collected and published and is exhibited internationally in galleries and museums. He also works closely with human rights organizations and believes in disseminating his work in forms that can be distributed as widely as possible and can be of use to the communities themselves."



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Fazal Sheikh is an absolutely amazing human being and photographer. I had the opportunity to go to one of his lectures and had him critique my work during my undergrad. He is just so brilliant and eloquent in person, in his vision and purpose, and aesthetically in his work. I have some of his books if you'd ever like to see- I highly recommend going through his projects and reading the titles and the information about each series. 

4 comments:

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  2. this is great. thank you for introducing him because it relates to some of the things that i'm doing right now. for my collaboration: art as a social force class, i'm working with community organizations and members in the community where they consider me as an "outsider". i'm in the process of trying to build a relationship with community members by literally going out to the community and getting on board with some community organizations and even going out to the library to meet people. the mutual engagement is very important because many times artists go into a community and propose to do some art projects where there is just one-way communication... and then when all is done, the artist is gone. my group and i are trying to avoid that by committing ourselves to build long-term relationships and get the dialogue going with the members. it's great to see an artist who is committed to social justice issues and a long-term commitment with the community members.

    really excited to learn more about him.

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  3. You're welcome. Would love to hear more about what you are doing.

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