Contact Sheet #34 Fazal Sheikh : A Sense of Common Ground : Photographs from Kenya's Northern Frontier

Fazal Sheikh understands the power of photographic representation. In his portraits from Kenya's Northern Frontier he finds that power in the faces and gestures of people from Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. His portraits are empowering in many ways. The simple detail that each portrait includes the names of the people is an acknowledgement of respect that opposes the usual tag line of 'Somali mother with malnourished child' or other anonymous identifications that usually accompany photographs of Africans who aren't Nelson Mandela.

Sheikh shares a part of his own lineage with the people he photographs. His father is Kenyan and Sheikh speaks the same language as many of the people in his photographs. These points of common ground enable Sheikh to spend time uncovering small bits of personal information about his subjects that he translates into moments of trust and recognition across the picture plane of his photographs. We sense that the terms of agreement for the photograph have been arrived at together, a collaboration of conferral and acceptance. Within that collaboration Sheikh creates the opportunity for his subjects to express their dignity and then responds by giving that dignity the time and the place to form into the descriptions of his photographs.

Fazal Sheikh's photographs are not as important to Ajoh Achot, William Gai or Nyapa Deng as they are to us - the outsiders - freighted with our assumptions, pity and prejudice. Sheikh's photographs clearly acknowledge that the Ethiopian, Sudanese and Somali refugees in Kenya's Northern Frontier know who they are. They reach out to one another, they wear their customs and culture with pride, they persevere, they feel pain, they share affections, they are relentlessly human - like someone we know.
Source: collection.lightwork.org