Award-winning photographer and human rights advocate Fazal Sheikh weaved tales of tormented refugees during a lecture Tuesday at the Block Museum of Art while showing black-and-white pictures he took at camps in Pakistan and Africa.

Sheikh, whose work with refugees and impoverished farming communities in Brazil is on display in prestigious museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, used his photographs to humanize the victims of wars in far-off countries for an audience of about 80 people.

The photographs began as an examination of his family’s heritage. His grandfather was from India and moved to Kenya, where Sheikh’s father was born. In the past decade, Sheikh traveled to Kenya and Pakistan and took photographs of refugees fleeing from war-torn lands.

When he first arrived at the refugee camps on the border of Sudan and saw boys as young as 8 years old being trained for war deployment, Sheikh said he felt uneasy.

“I was struck by an extraordinary sense of vulnerability,” he said. “I didn’t have the tools to render this place or grapple with it.”

Along with moving stories about the refugees, Sheikh entertained the audience with a comical imitation of an African man who wanted him to photograph his three wives.

Though many Africans were willing to speak to him because of his Kenyan heritage, Sheikh resented the label.

“It’s a racist notion that only a Kenyan has the right to speak about Africans,” he said.

Stories that a Kenyan doctor told him of Somali mothers who smothered their malnourished children inspired Sheikh to photograph Somali families. Pictures of mothers breast-feeding their babies flashed across the screen as Sheikh told the story of a Somali girl who became mute after being separated from her mother.

Sheikh continued to examine his family in a subsequent visit to Pakistan. When he arrived, Sheikh said he found hundreds of thousands of Afghans living in exile who had just fought a war over Soviet occupation. Sheikh traveled to villages and talked to many Afghan refugees.

“Illuminated by gaslight, I would listen to their stories,” he said.

Many were still grieving for family members they had lost in the war. Sheikh’s photographs showed tormented Afghans holding up small pictures of dead relatives while praying to Allah in hopes they would someday be reunited.

“One of the greatest difficulties in Afghanistan is that less than 1 percent of the population is literate and the (Taliban leaders) hold great sway in their interpretation and manipulation of their religion,” he said.

Sheikh said he was in Europe, where he now lives, at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“As someone who has both strains within me – the part that ties me to Afghanistan and the part that ties me to New York City – I found it very difficult to confront,” he said. “If I can’t let those two sides live in harmony in my work, I don’t know whether I could continue with it.”

Nola Akiwowo said she was very touched by Sheikh’s presentation.

“His black-and-white pictures were very moving,” said Akiwowo, a McCormick sophomore. “He seemed to be tied personally to his subjects. He talked to all of them and knew all their names.”