Moksha

“In his latest book, Sheikh combines portraits, testimonials, cultural details and history to present a holistic view of the women of Vrindavan. The mood and spirituality of this holy city permeate the pages with his soft-focus and fog-saturated black-and-white images. The ritual of turning each page, looking at each portrait, reading each personal history, is meditative. The reason these women live in Vrindavan, though, is societal marginalization. Once widowed, and cast out by their own families, they seek refuge in Vrindavan only to survive by chanting at the temples for a charitable donation or begging on the streets. These women are resolute, devoting themselves to Krishna in hopes of being released from their misery and the cycle of reincarnation, to reach a higher state in the afterlife called ‘moksha’. Sheikh has been lauded with many awards, and rightly so. Just last year he was named a MacArthur Fellow. Education is power and that is part of Sheikh’s vision with his International Human Rights series. In addition to reaching those who can make a difference, he also seeks to enlighten the citizens within the countries of displaced peoples. He does this by making material available online and by including text in the languages of the respective communities. In Moksha there is a separate insert with translations in Hindi and Bengali. Time and again, with each project, Sheikh produces beautiful and moving images that make a lasting impression and leave one both pensive and solemn.”

“Far from orienting us to a neatly packaged reportage, Sheikh’s ‘subjective camera’ – panning shadowy voids and foggy landscapes, timeworn façades and deserted alleyways, sleeping dogs and birds in flight, not to mention the phantomlike white-shrouded widows chanting in the temples—thrusts us into the disorienting, paradoxical experience at hand. The widows’ stories are painful, not simply because of their traditional exclusion from a society that considers them ‘inauspicious’ but because of their material situations: cast out by their families, denied their inheritances and decent pensions, and, depending on their age, prey to sexual exploitation. But if Sheikh makes it clear in his epilogue that the keys to resolving this earthly plight are education and economic independence, he also recognizes that what was for him the ‘secret, impenetrable world’ of Vrindavan offers the widows a haven and that their communion with Krishna gives meaning to their lives.”