Street Roots • March 9-15, 2018
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Page 7
SHEIKH, from page 5
the kind of mode I can imagine it being
compelling.
E . G .: The exhibit is titled “Com m on
Ground, ” and it would seem that people who
are marginalized, displaced or fleeing conflict
in different areas o f the world m ust a ll have
some things in common. In the years that
y o u ’ve been photographing these groups, have
you noticed any changes in that common
ground shared am ong those comm unities that
y o u ’ve been docum enting?
Above, this photo o f M a lik h was taken at a squatter
settlement in D elh i, In d ia , in 2 0 0 7 fo r the series “L a d li.”
D u r in g this time F a zal S h e ik h ’s work focused on the
situation o f yo u n g women in In d ia , where women still live
in a patriarchal system with few in d iv id u a l rights.
Seynab A z ir Wardeeren’s picture was taken in 2 0 0 0 fo r the
series “R a m a d a n M o o n .” The series focused on this woman
as she gazed into the night d u rin g the month o f R am ad an
while she was detained with her yo u n g son in a shelter fo r
asylum seekers in the Netherlands.
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F. S.: Well the kind of common thread
through all of my work is this idea of myself
as an American, born and raised in New
York with family that comes from farther
afield, from East Africa and from India. It
was important to reconcile those different
impulses within my very being; an ability to
move fluently from one community to
another and to insist that there is a kind of
harmony across that divide. In essence, all
of the work is about that.
Many of those projects are made in
communities that are currently vilified by
my government, and so I kind of bristle at
that notion. I ’m a little bit heartbroken by
the sense that coming back to the city of my
birth, with my name, Fazal Sheikh, soon
after Sept. 11, and treated as though I was
guilty by connection. I think that’s
something a person like me has had to learn
to live with as part of their reality in the last
15 years - this idea of certain groups being
vilified, of certain communities being
ostracized and a xenophobia about what
having those people in our country might
mean. It’s kind of based on fear. The same
kind of fear with which we might imagine
homeless communities or so this inability to
remove oneself and to imagine oneself in
the position of another.
I think that was true in the refugee
communities in Africa for instance. It always
was the notion that this was the gaze of
another. It was only after Bosnia, when the
refugee communities were fleeing and the
fighting was coming to Europe that people
started to realize, “Oh actually, I myself,
given the wrong, unfortunate circumstances,
could find myself in that same position.”
The subtext of the whole exhibition is a
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wish for the viewer, the reader, to be able to
imagine themselves in the position of those
whose lives they’re witnessing.
E . G .: A t this exhibition, am ong a ll the
many faces that y o u ’ve photographed, are there
any in particular whose memory stays with
you, that you fin d yo u r m ind returning to from
time to time?
F. S.: Oh absolutely. You know in some of
the Somali camps for instance, I returned
over the course of many years. When I was
photographing in feeding centers, and then
returning eight years later and finding
those same children who had been infants
being treated in the centers, and the
women - there is one part of the exhibition
called “A Camel for the Son,” and the title
drawn, actually, from a letter that was given
to me by Abshiro Aden Mohammed, the
Somali women’s leader of a camp called
Dagahaley, in the desert, who had lived for
more than a decade in these camps. She
writes very openly, forcefully, pointedly
about the plight of women and children, not
only within the camps, but in their own
society back home. Imagining, what is real
activism? How does one sustain a life in
activism? When you witness people like
that, and you are able to bring their voices
forward, then you’ve really witnessed true
activism.
Particularly now, when so many of us as
artists, photographers, writers, have felt
without any power in the current
administration, where do you gain a kind of
degree of solace? I realized that in a way,
putting yourself back into the process and
looking for those kinds of stories once again
is the best that we can do. And so I ’m
frequently thinking back to those moments
of meeting such women as Abshiro, or the
woman whose story is the basis of
“Ramadan M oon,” Seynab Azir Wardeere,
another Somali woman who speaks very
forcefully and bravely about what she has
endured in her life, and laced within those
various stories is a degree of strength and
perseverance, which is something I actually
admire. I’m not sure, if I were in the same
circumstance, I would be able to muster as
much strength and dignity as they have.
emily@streetroots.org; Twitter @greenwrites