Introduction

The current political moment suggests a number of responses: combat, collective action, resistance, refusal. The work that artists do may engage with any or all of these. In this particular instance, we wanted to find a new way of speaking to the startling reappearance of some very old problems.

The photographs in this book were made by Fazal over a span of more than two decades, in numerous countries and territories around the world. For Human Archipelago we selected and sequenced the images together, and worked in consultation with each other every step of the way. The focal point of Fazal’s past work has been people who have suffered or are suffering the loss of home in one sense or another. He has photographed people as well as their landscapes, presenting that work in numerous books. That concern predominates in this book as well.

Teju, whose previous work has crossed genres to explore various dimensions of the insider–outsider question and its attendant ethical responsibilities, has here written a series of indirect responses to Fazal’s images. Teju’s texts acknowledge the continuities between the various historical displacements visible in Fazal’s photographs but also seek to speak to the current political fractures in the United States and elsewhere.

For both of us, the question of hospitality is paramount. How might we be able to move from a conversation about rights to one about the mutual responsibilities that people bear towards each other, regardless of their race, religion, gender, or nationality?

We have called the book Human Archipelago to underscore the mutual dependence that we believe underpins all human arrangements, but also to suggest that these texts and photographs are a kind of island chain, semi-independent entities within a single ecosystem.

At the end of the book, readers can find supplemental sections that provide additional information about the original contexts of the images, as well as the sources of the various interwoven quotations.

As human beings we might be temporarily bounded by our circumstances. But we are not contained by them.

Fazal Sheikh and Teju Cole
Princeton, NJ and Cambridge, MA
November 2018