Skip to main contentBiographySince 1973, all of my work has been about making visible the invisible in nature and in culture. Initially, I used many light sensitive emulsions and technologies to reveal the infinite potential for form in nature and the landscape of my imagination. After 1980, as I became increasingly concerned about the growth of the military industrial complex, my work included themes related to the nuclear industry, foreign military sales and the destructiveness of war.
In 1990, after learning that half a million people were in refugee camps in Thailand, I photographed in five Cambodian and Hmong camps in Thailand and began a longitudinal project on the aftermath of war and its effect on the peoples who survive. This project, “Indochina Document” includes two large works, “Remember Cambodia” and “Hmong In Transition.” Since 1994, I have also done numerous documentary projects including photographing museum guards, tribal peoples of Balochistan, Pakistan, the garment industry in Los Angeles and Bangkok, Thailand.
Most recently I have done a large body of work about the growth of incarceration in the United States and the loss of civil liberties. I have come to think of all of my work as “Site Unseen” and have titled all of these bodies of work using this term: “Site Unseen: Light Works”; “Site Unseen: Incarceration”; “Site Unseen: Museum Guards”; ”Site Unseen: The Garment Industry”, etc. In this way, not only do I reference realities we normally can’t see, but I invite viewers to imagine their own.
(https://sheilapinkel.com/index.html)
Image Not Available
for Sheila Pinkel
Sheila Pinkel
American, born 1941
In 1990, after learning that half a million people were in refugee camps in Thailand, I photographed in five Cambodian and Hmong camps in Thailand and began a longitudinal project on the aftermath of war and its effect on the peoples who survive. This project, “Indochina Document” includes two large works, “Remember Cambodia” and “Hmong In Transition.” Since 1994, I have also done numerous documentary projects including photographing museum guards, tribal peoples of Balochistan, Pakistan, the garment industry in Los Angeles and Bangkok, Thailand.
Most recently I have done a large body of work about the growth of incarceration in the United States and the loss of civil liberties. I have come to think of all of my work as “Site Unseen” and have titled all of these bodies of work using this term: “Site Unseen: Light Works”; “Site Unseen: Incarceration”; “Site Unseen: Museum Guards”; ”Site Unseen: The Garment Industry”, etc. In this way, not only do I reference realities we normally can’t see, but I invite viewers to imagine their own.
(https://sheilapinkel.com/index.html)
Person TypeIndividual
Onödowa’ga:’ (Seneca Deer Clan,) Kiowa, Mvskoke, founded 1983