I have taken my Fazal Sheikh books off the shelf and am restudying this important photographer. With his full body large format portrait work I love the way he uses space around his subjects. To often with my compositions I cut off things, feet, faces etc. FS uses the space around the subject to tell an important part of the story.
I need to study his work carefully and learn form it before proceeding with my large format series "Forgotten Laughter". I might also use the view camera to do the series on Asian migrant workers (no title for that project yet). I would like to include more details like peoples names and ages etc. as FS does, but how do you do that when your working alone and your subject speaks a different language? I need to become more fluent in Burmese, Khmer etc. With Thai/Laos/English it not a problem I can simply ask and write down the info but when my subject does not speak those languages I am trapped. FS must have had NGO workers, or translators helping him out, maybe an assistant to take notes etc. Doing it me, myself and I as I do makes some things more difficult.
Update: I have 3 books of photographs done by Fazal Sheikh, I bought 2 more off Amazon this week. I hope these new books will help with my growth as a photographer. Learning more about a great creative artist like Mr. Sheikh has to be a good thing.
I need to study his work carefully and learn form it before proceeding with my large format series "Forgotten Laughter". I might also use the view camera to do the series on Asian migrant workers (no title for that project yet). I would like to include more details like peoples names and ages etc. as FS does, but how do you do that when your working alone and your subject speaks a different language? I need to become more fluent in Burmese, Khmer etc. With Thai/Laos/English it not a problem I can simply ask and write down the info but when my subject does not speak those languages I am trapped. FS must have had NGO workers, or translators helping him out, maybe an assistant to take notes etc. Doing it me, myself and I as I do makes some things more difficult.
Update: I have 3 books of photographs done by Fazal Sheikh, I bought 2 more off Amazon this week. I hope these new books will help with my growth as a photographer. Learning more about a great creative artist like Mr. Sheikh has to be a good thing.
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| Narawe Fausta with her daughter Esther and her newborn Mahantamba ("he who is born at the time of war"), Rwandan refugee camp, Lumasi, Tanzania, 1994, By Fazal Sheikh |
