Beloved Daughters unites two projects by photographer and activist Fazal Sheikh. Both projects were created over a span of two decades, and focus on women from two specific communities in India. The first project, Moksha (Heaven), portrays the northern Indian city of Vrindavan, where dispossessed widows go to devote themselves to Krishna and seek moksha: final release from the cycle of death and rebirth. Sheikh's next project, Ladli (Beloved Daughter) portrays the lives of girls and young women in a society where, despite progressive laws, their human, civil, and economic rights are routinely suppressed.
The two projects combined in this powerful exhibition provide intimate and revealing portraits of the faces and words of the old and young -- widows of great age, mothers and their children -- that paint an eloquent picture of women's prospects in modern India, a nation of 1.1 billion people. Sheikh pairs intense camera portraits with testimony from his subjects, offering a voice to those who would otherwise remain anonymous, conveying stories that are both eye-opening and thought-provoking.
"Beloved Daughters is in keeping with Fazal Sheikh's other photographic projects," states Carol McCusker, MoPA's Curator of Photography. "With this body of work, however, he takes us deeper into his commitment to under-represented communities. His calm, empathetic vision enhances our understanding, also given depth by the women's voices through writing."
About Fazal Sheikh
Fazal Sheikh uses photography to create sustained portraits of communities around the world, addressing people’s beliefs and traditions, as well as the political and economic problems of particular communities.
Since the early 1990s, Fazal Sheikh has focused attention on the experiences of people displaced from their homelands by a variety of causes. After photographing refugees from conflicts in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique and Rwanda, he traveled to northern Pakistan to encounter Afghans exiled by power struggles between the Taliban and the Mujahedeen. More recent projects have taken him to Brazil, Cuba and Mexico.
When Moksha was published in 2005, Fazal Sheikh was awarded both a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant and the Henri Cartier-Bresson International Award. He immediately returned to India and undertook the work that became Ladli. The two projects were shown for the first time at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris in the summer of 2007.
Fazal Sheikh was born in New York City in 1965 and graduated from Princeton University in 1987.
MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS
1649 El Prado - San Diego, CA 92101
October 10, 2009 - January 31, 2010
About The Museum of Photographic Arts
