Photography exhibit evokes compassion

The exhibit “Beloved Daughters: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh” at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art aims to stir emotion and empathy.

The free exhibit, open to the public through Sept. 13, features 75 black and white portraits that examine the challenges and prejudices facing girls and women in some sectors of contemporary India.  

“Beloved Daughters” unites two projects, “Moksha” and “Ladli,” by artist and activist Fazal Sheikh.

“Moksha,” which means heaven, features portraits of dispossessed widows, cast out by their families, in the holy city of Vrandavan who spend their lives devoted to the Hindu God Krishna. “Ladli,” which translates to beloved daughters, explores prejudices of girls and young women whose stories include begging on the streets, prostitution, street performing, human trafficking and abuse.

The portraits, combined with personal testimonies, give viewers a window into females facing poverty and prejudice in today’s India.

“There is a real respect he gives the individual; a sense of empathy with the subjects,” said April Watson, associate curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Watson said Sheikh works in the tradition of a documentary photographer, committed to photography for social change.

She said he has spent time in refugee settlements getting acquainted with the elders of the communities and their refugees. Since the 1990s, he has photographed refugees from conflicts in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, Rwanda and Afghanistan.

“He really gets to know each of these people individually,” Watson said. “There’s intensity there, looking them in the eye.”

Sheikh was born in New York in 1965. Raised in the United States, he spent numerous summers in Kenya, the country of his father’s origin.

He graduated from Princeton University in 1987. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation International Award. Sheikh takes the proceeds from his projects to the countries he portrays and reinvests in more photographic documentaries.

Through his portraits, Watson said Sheikh poses the question, “What is my responsibility to these people?”

Sheikh poses his mission in the opening text of the “Beloved Daughters” exhibit: “Perhaps the point of all my work is that the problems with no clear answers are the ones worth opening up.”

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