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Fazal Sheikh & Teju Cole: Human Archipelago
Sheikh and Cole's acclaimed text–image vision of a compassionate global community, now redesigned with a new cover For the past 25 years Fazal Sheikh (born 1965) has highlighted the plight of displaced people and refugees around the world. He has photographed people driven from their homes by war as well as those upended by the redrawing of national borders and the reassertion of racial and ethnic divisions. Sheikh has also made sublime photographs of landscapes altered by political and environmental crises.
In recent years, the shift to the political right in the US has been replicated across Europe, the Middle East, Central and East Africa and Southeast Asia, as authoritarian governments and xenophobia have increased. As an act of refusal of these political trends, Sheikh sought out the celebrated novelist and critic Teju Cole (born 1975) for a collaboration that would reinforce their commitment to the ideal of a compassionate global community as well as the importance of individual courage.
The resulting book, now reprinted with a new cover, represents the two authors’ distinct visions, their shared values and mutual spirit of cooperation. With Cole’s words and Sheikh’s photos we are confronted with fundamental and newly necessary questions of Who is my neighbor? Who is kin to me? Who is a stranger? What does it mean to be human?
In recent years, the shift to the political right in the US has been replicated across Europe, the Middle East, Central and East Africa and Southeast Asia, as authoritarian governments and xenophobia have increased. As an act of refusal of these political trends, Sheikh sought out the celebrated novelist and critic Teju Cole (born 1975) for a collaboration that would reinforce their commitment to the ideal of a compassionate global community as well as the importance of individual courage.
The resulting book, now reprinted with a new cover, represents the two authors’ distinct visions, their shared values and mutual spirit of cooperation. With Cole’s words and Sheikh’s photos we are confronted with fundamental and newly necessary questions of Who is my neighbor? Who is kin to me? Who is a stranger? What does it mean to be human?
256 pages, Hardcover
Published April 23, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 9, 2020
I never pictured myself sobbing uncontrollably by the time I got to a series of aerial photographs, but, here we are. Poetry, quotation, philosophical juxtaposition, ethics, religion, what it means to be human and why?
April 22, 2021
In 1955, Edward Steichen created a photographic exhibition for The Museum of Modern Art called “The Family of Man.” The exhibition was an assemblage of 503 photographs taken in 68 countries by numerous photographers. The book based on the exhibit opens with a quotation from James Joyce’s "Ulysses." At the end of the novel, Leopold Bloom’s wife Molly speaks:
“...and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes...and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
The exhibit is a magnificent testament of Yes to the faces of the family of men, women and children who appear in it. As Carl Sandburg wrote in the prologue, “In a seething of saints and sinners, winners or losers, in a womb of superstition, faith, genius, crime, sacrifice, here is the People....”, the People in a collection to be perused over, and over, and over.
In 2019, the photographer Fazal Sheikh and the writer Teju Cole published "Human Archipelago," an assemblage of photographs, primarily of people’s faces, taken by Sheikh from 1989 through 2018, and texts by Cole or selected from world literatures over centuries reflecting the ideas that
“The face of the Other is the face of God, the care of the body of the Other is sacred” (178), and
“There are no strangers. There are only versions of ourselves….” (234, quoting Toni Morrison)
The faces of the elderly, the refugees, the victims of violence and poverty, the beautiful and the proud that are presented here are sacred and versions of what we might have been, deserving of our care. Here is another Yes to the family of man, all part of the human archipelago that stretches across time, geography and culture.
This is a book to be read slowly, perhaps one photograph and text at a time, to meditate upon those faces and upon our common humanity and how to care for each other.
“...and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes...and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
The exhibit is a magnificent testament of Yes to the faces of the family of men, women and children who appear in it. As Carl Sandburg wrote in the prologue, “In a seething of saints and sinners, winners or losers, in a womb of superstition, faith, genius, crime, sacrifice, here is the People....”, the People in a collection to be perused over, and over, and over.
In 2019, the photographer Fazal Sheikh and the writer Teju Cole published "Human Archipelago," an assemblage of photographs, primarily of people’s faces, taken by Sheikh from 1989 through 2018, and texts by Cole or selected from world literatures over centuries reflecting the ideas that
“The face of the Other is the face of God, the care of the body of the Other is sacred” (178), and
“There are no strangers. There are only versions of ourselves….” (234, quoting Toni Morrison)
The faces of the elderly, the refugees, the victims of violence and poverty, the beautiful and the proud that are presented here are sacred and versions of what we might have been, deserving of our care. Here is another Yes to the family of man, all part of the human archipelago that stretches across time, geography and culture.
This is a book to be read slowly, perhaps one photograph and text at a time, to meditate upon those faces and upon our common humanity and how to care for each other.
March 15, 2020
Such a beautiful collaboration of words and image. When flipping through it's easy to be flippant about either, but the work within is meditative, engaging, and thoughtful. There is such a mystery in Sheikh's photographs; I'm intrigued to know more of his process.
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August 31, 2020As an example of a hybrid prose/photobook, I thought this was very interesting, especially in how it comments on the photobook form itself. But more important and impactful is its message of humanity, hospitality, interconnectedness. It is never trite nor saccharine, it does not call for a shallow form of connection that erases history or difference. Rather, it earns its message with every sentence and every image. Quite a powerful book, I think.
March 9, 2020
So beautiful, so important in these days.
September 11, 2022
Breathtaking.
September 17, 2024
It's not a bad book - more a reflective exercise with some images than anything else. I'd have preferred more of one or the other. As a composite it didn't succeed for me.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews