Institute of Advanced Studies

Of veils and mourning: Fazal Sheikh's widowed images

The talk was organised around an exhibition of Fazal Sheikh's work on women in India.

He began this work in the early months of 2004, and it focuses on the plight of dispossessed Indian widows who make the pilgrimage to Vrindivan, the "city of widows," and the birthplace of Krishna, to devote themselves to Krishna and to seek "Moksha" or salvation. This talk was part of an ongoing engagement with Sheikh's human rights work and also of Professor Cadava's interest in thinking about what it means to read an image historically.

The talk was both a reading of Sheikh's photographs and a Benjaminian meditation on the nature of photography in general. Sheikh's photographic project can be viewed under the title "Moksha" on his website.