The Moon Is Behind Us.

Photographs by Fazal Sheikh. Text by Fazal Sheikh & Terry Tempest Williams.

Steidl, Gottingen, Germany, 2021. English, 192 pp., 45 illustrations, 5½x7¾".

In the summer of 2020, their collaboration suddenly halted by COVID-19, photographer Fazal Sheikh (born 1965) and writer, educator and activist Terry Tempest Williams (born 1955) found themselves 5,000 miles apart, Sheikh in Zurich, Switzerland, Tempest Williams in Castle Valley, Utah. Like so many others, they communicated across the days and nights by text and email, reflecting on the state of politics as the pandemic spread across the world.

Looking back over his work, Sheikh decided to make a gift for Tempest Williams as a gesture of friendship and respect in troubled times. He selected 30 images, one for each year of his life as an artist, corresponding to one complete cycle of the moon. Some weeks later, a package arrived in Zurich. Inside were 30 letters from Tempest Williams, each responding to a single image, written across 30 days, another lunar cycle.

Studying the images had led her to wider, more philosophical considerations of the ways they connected to contemporary events: climate change, racial abuse, the advances of women and—the focus of her collaboration with Sheikh—the protection of the ancestral rights of the Native American tribes.

The spontaneous nature of the correspondence made it all the more immediate, and when images and words were placed together, both artists felt they might be offered to others who shared their concerns and might find comfort in the exchanges. This book is the result, offered at a time of crisis, in the understanding that we are all responsible for building a better future.

Reviewed by Brian Arnold on photo-eye Blog.

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Cat# DU145H Hardbound $40.00 (9783958298804)
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