The Victor Weeps

“In recent times the press and television have been glutted with images of starving, emaciated, ragged people in wretched camps standing in interminable lines for a bit of sustenance, awaiting death with distended stomachs. Horrible as these pictures are, they are almost clichés by now. Fazal Sheikh photographs refugees without them. The Victor Weeps is full of strong, sober, contemplative and respectful portraits rather than scenes of misery. The men's faces are eloquent, mournful, intense, marked by years of sorrow and, presumably, dedication. Even young children are seen close up with expressions so serious they amount to sadness. Mr. Sheikh, restricting himself to portraits, fills in the lives and pasts, the losses and longings, in his book with quotations from the people themselves and accounts of what he heard and saw.”

“Sheikh personalizes the struggle of single human beings in portraits rather than taking photojournalistic shots of brutal events. Sheikh and his subjects collaborate in making lyrical and introspective photographs that resonate with a profound sense of dignity. In his book Sheikh writes, ‘As the world spins impossibly out of control around them, Afghans look further inward, narrowing their scope of vision to their own friends and families to find the spirit that will sustain them.”

“There’s something remarkable about Sheikh’s photographs in The Victor Weeps... The result feels like an exceptionally thoughtful family album, full of yearning and concern. Sheikh gathers the elders around the gas lamp and bathes their sorrow and determination in a soft, lovely light. Women, even the most clear-eyed of his dreamers, appear wrapped in similar reveries of remembrance. Scattered among the portraits are images of hands offering other portraits – tiny pictures of dead brothers, sons, and husbands whose presence is as vital to the community as any living soul. At the end of the book, Sheikh introduces the children of the exiles and offers what he calls ‘a ray of hope’. But don’t look for sunny optimism here: these are mature, knowing faces, at once open and closed, apprehensive, grave and terribly moving. ‘A lot of the better pictures were not so much what I did but what they brought to that space,’ Sheikh insists, and these kids brought more history than we can imagine.”