Lamu, Kenya,

1987

A documentary photographer who is best known for his images of East African refugees, Sheikh aims to give visual representation to people who are not represented politically. Although he grew up in New York, Sheikh spent his childhood and adolescent summers living with his father’s relatives in Nairobi, Kenya. He took this photograph in Lamu, Kenya, immediately after his graduation from Princeton. The recipient of a Fulbright grant, he had planned to document that Swahili community, but he quickly became interested in recording the influx of refugees from Somalia, Sudan, and Ethiopia, and—having gained permission from community leaders—he began to photograph inside refugee camps on the country’s northern border. This was the first of many projects in which Sheikh has worked to counter the ignorance and prejudice that are often attached to his subjects.