Born to a Kenyan father and an American Mother, Fazal Sheikh spent many summers in Kenya with his paternal family before returning with Fulbright scholarship in 1992 in order to develop a documentary project on refugee camps there. The exhibition A Sense of Common Ground was the result of this first monographic project and took place at the International Center of Photography in New York.

In 2002 Sheikh returned to the refugee camps he had photographed a decade earlier. He carried a copy of A Sense of Common Ground with him as a reference, to see if some of the people he had portrayed on his initial trip were still there. He found some of them among the Somali refugees who still lived uprooted in the Dagahaley Camp. This included an entire generation of people who had grown up among the blurred boundaries of the camp. Of the many facets within that experience, Sheikh compiled the testimonies of a group of women who had fallen victim to abuse. Such was the case of Abshiro Aden Mohammed, the leader of the Dagahaley Women. Her photograph is a beautiful example of the author’s ability to convey a different reality through portraiture. The clear depiction of the woman’s face and her sharp and piercing gaze seem to cut through the medium. Fazal Sheikh did not portray the face of a victim; instead, what shines through is this woman’s strength and dignity.