NYAB Event - Fazal Sheikh "Ether"

Fazal Sheikh "Ether"

Pace MacGill

This event has ended.

"Ether" (2008–2011) is the third project in a trilogy on India that includes "Moksha" (2005) and "Ladli" (2007). "Ether" is Sheikh's first foray into color photography and will be the subject of a forthcoming monograph from Steidl (Spring 2013).

"Fazal Sheikh: Ether" features over 40 pigment prints of images taken in the sacred city of Varanasi (commonly known as Banaras or Banares), a cultural and religious center situated on the banks of the River Ganges in northern India. A place of pilgrimage for many faiths, Varanasi is considered an auspicious site by Hindus, who believe that dying on the Ganges provides assurance of heavenly bliss and emancipation from the eternal cycle of reincarnation. Upon leaving the body, the soul is then thought to devolve into the five elements of earth, fire, water, air, and ether. Sheikh’s color photographs seek to visualize the spiritual concept of “ether” in their exploration of sleep, dream, death, and birth. In the depths of night, Sheikh quietly leads viewers through the dormant town of Varanasi, observing its slumbering inhabitants, capturing the first moments of infants’ lives in the maternity wards, and memorializing those individuals who have passed at the river’s cremation ghats. Throughout this visit, his subjects remain undisturbed within the calm, protective embrace of their own minds and bodies. As Sheikh’s camera, and by extension the viewer, cannot penetrate their thoughts or feelings, we are left to contemplate the essence of the dreamlike states to which they have retreated. While Sheikh’s previous projects in India revealed human rights violations and social injustice, Ether is decidedly without a political agenda. And unlike "Ladli" and "Moksha," the portraits in this body of work are presented anonymously and without commentary. Collectively, the images are a rumination on the cycles of life – highlighted by Sheikh’s pairings of those who have entered and left the world on the same day – and the universal yet illusive experience of dreams.