In Place

In the summer of 2017, photographer Fazal Sheikh travelled with writer and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams to the small town of Bluff, in southern Utah, to attend a gathering of the Utah Diné Bikéyah intertribal coalition. The elders of the five regional tribes had worked together since the organisation was founded in 2012, putting aside their historical differences in pursuit of a common goal: to protect their ancestral lands in Utah.

It marked the start of a five-year project by Sheikh in which he worked with tribal communities and others, immersing himself in these desert landscapes, walking, listening, and absorbing signs on the land’s surface that offer clues to the beauty beneath.