Fazal Ilahi Sheikh was born in 1965 in New York City. Since graduating from Princeton University in 1987, he has worked with displaced communities across East Africa, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brazil, Cuba and India.

In 2005 Sheikh was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Additional fellowships include those from the J. William Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Mondriaan Foundation, and the Mother Jones International Documentary Fund.

Sheikh is the recipient of the International Henri Cartier-Bresson Grand Prize, the Prix d’Arles, the Infinity Award, the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Ruttenberg Award, and the Ferguson Award.

In 1994 Sheikh was named by The New York Times as one of thirty artists, thirty and under, most likely to change the culture for the next thirty years.

He is the author of six books :
A Sense of Common Ground (Scalo, 1996)
The Victor Weeps (Scalo, 1998)
A Camel for the Son (IHRS, 2001)
Ramadan Moon (IHRS, 2001)
Moksha (IHRS and Steidl, 2005)
Un Chameau Pour Le Fils (Photo Poche Societé,
    Actes SUD, 2005)

In 2001 he embarked on a series of book projects concerned with international human rights issues titled the International Human Rights Series (IHRS).

Fazal Sheikh lives in Zurich, New York City and Kenya.