A Sense of Common Ground

Cream cloth boards with titles on spine, as issued. Photographs and text by Fazal Sheikh. Printed on thick coated stock paper in Zurich, Switzerland to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents black-and-white photographs of enormous power and austere beauty in the great tradition of "concerned photography", an exquisite photographic record he made of Ethiopian, Sudanese, and Somalian refugees in Northern Kenya. Fazal Sheikh understands the true artistic power inherent in the photographic image. The photographs are presented in a straightforward yet deeply personal and moving manner. Unlike the stock photos of dark-skinned refugees we are accustomed to seeing "catalogued" on nightly news reports or weekly magazines, Fazal Sheikh's work is empowering and liberating. He forces us to pay attention to the refugee as a specific individual rather one of humanity's hopeless "masses", by giving them names, contexts, incisive, often humorous commentary, and social realities. ...