Fazal Sheikh is an artist and activist based in Zurich, Switzerland. His work has been widely exhibited, in institutions ranging from the Tate Modern to the Princeton University Art Museum to small huts in rural India. He has collaborated with numerous foundations and non-governmental-organizations, and he has won, among many other awards, a MacArthur Prize.

I asked him to do an interview with the PhotoPhilanthropy blog because he approaches collaboration, strategic partnerships and accessibility in a way that I find very inspiring.

I bet that doesn’t seem strange to you. I bet you think, as I have in the past, “Oh, well, science and health—those things really matter. They really help people. Art is just for fun.”

But I no longer agree. I think we over-invest in science, and we under-invest in art.

During a recent trip to Savannah, Georgia I began to see my  “traveler’s eyes” a different way. On one hand I was
seduced by the soft, warm breeze, Spanish mosses in gray green curtains billowing out from every tree, pink azaleas
beginning to escape from their buds into a southern spring. On the other, trash caught in [...]

”much has been achieved in recent years. Prior to 1995, there were no doctors in Cambodia that had any training in the treatment of eye disorders and diseases; so if you were blind, you remained so. Since then, the government has set up the National Sub Committee for Prevention of Blindness (now known as the National Eye Health Program), supported by a number of local and international non-government organisations”

I wish I could show you the pictures I saw last night. Dr. Sylvia A. Earle was in Bozeman to give the Montana State University Friends of Stegner Lecture. This deep-ocean explorer who is currently the Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society is a woman who has made and is making a difference [...]

White sands, turquoise sea, cerulean sky, and… what the ocean currents and winds brought in. Do we really need all that plastic stuff and why does it end up in the ocean?

The Municipal Dump in Phnom Penh was the scene of abject poverty and hardship. It closed its gates in 2009 but is this the end of the story, what has happened to the people who worked as scavengers on the dump. The new dump has been moved several miles outside of the city and NO scavenging is to be allowed.

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An inspiring video of dancing around the world.