Photographer’s Images Record the Struggles of Displaced People

Fazal Sheikh has traveled to the far reaches of the world — including Somalian refugee camps in

Kenya and Afghan refugee villages in northern Pakistan — to capture people’s images and record their struggles.

Before photographing his subjects, he spends weeks with them to gain their trust and learn about their lives. Through Mr. Sheikh’s black-and-white images and the text he writes to accompany the photographs, he tries to give a fuller story of a place than what people may see in the news, he says.

“The basis of my work is about the notion of extending beyond racial, cultural, and religious borders and connecting with people of varied backgrounds and then rendering it in a way that makes you realize that they are not so dissimilar from us,” says Mr. Sheikh, who is of American and Pakistani descent.

He is among this year’s 25 recipients of a MacArthur fellowship, which recognizes creativity, originality, and potential.

In its announcement, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation called Mr. Sheikh’s work “solemn and arresting,” adding that the photographer “slows the act of viewing, calls attention to the persistent nature of conflict, and highlights the importance of bearing witness.”

Mr. Sheikh, 40, says he plans to use the $500,000 prize to undertake projects that are more complex and lengthy than those he has been able to pursue in the past.

Fitting Into the World

He discovered photography as an undergraduate at Princeton University and found it “a good way to delve into the way you feel about yourself, and the way you fit into the world.”

In 1992 he received a Fulbright grant to take pictures in Kenya. While he was there, a wave of what was to become hundreds of thousands of Somalians crossed the border to escape their country’s civil war. Mr. Sheikh asked permission from a Somali tribal elder to stay in one of the camps and take pictures. Images from his visit and a subsequent trip in 2000 were published in A Camel for the Son, the first of Mr. Sheikh’s books and exhibitions that call attention to human-rights issues in countries across the globe.

The book’s title refers to a gift for a Somali baby boy. (A girl receives nothing.) It includes a history of events in Somalia and is dedicated to the women and children in Kenyan refugee camps. Through their eyes the book tells harrowing stories of escape from war, rape, and recovery from malnutrition.

The Volkart Foundation, in Winterthur, Switzerland, helped pay for the project, and Mr. Sheikh donates his royalties to a fund that helps individuals and small organizations in areas where his photographs have been taken.

To expand the viewership of his work, Mr. Sheikh puts free digital versions on his Web site, http://www.fazalsheikh.org. He has also donated more than 15,000 books to human-rights groups and other charities, as well as to officials working in politics, cultural affairs, and other humanities organizations.

“Perhaps many of them might miss the mark, but others might strike a chord with the recipient,” says Mr. Sheikh. “If someone is willing to spend the time to read a story, then perhaps this is one way forward.”