Fazal Sheikh was born in 1965 in New York City. Since graduating from Princeton University, he has collaborated with displaced communities across East Africa, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brazil, Cuba and India. His awards include the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, the Prix d'Arles, and the Leica Medal of Excellence. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His previous books include A Sense of Common Ground, The Victor Weeps, A Camel for the Son, Ramadan Moon and Moksha. Exhibitions of his work have been presented at Tate Modern, London; the International Center of Photography and the United Nations, New York. His photographs are in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the George Eastman House, Rochester; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York City. The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris awarded Sheikh the HCB Award 2005 for his companion projects on Indian women: "Moksha" and "Girl Child".

In India it costs a poor family 50 rupees to hire a midwife to oversee the birth of a child. For an additional 10 rupees, the parents are assured that the birth of a girl will be met with an act of infanticide by the midwife. The alternative for many is an institution like the Delhi orphanage, in which Fazal Sheikh's work on the predicament of the girl-child in India begins--and 99 percent of that orphanage's population are girls. Girl Child follows on the heels of Sheik's 2005 Moksha, which documented the plight of the Indian widow, and for which, in combination with this companion volume, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson granted Sheikh its 2005 HCB Award. Sheikh's previous books include A Sense of Common Ground, The Victor Weeps, A Camel for the Son and Ramadan Moon. He was born in New York in 1965, and studied at Princeton University; he has received Fulbright and NEA fellowships, and presented his work at the Tate Modern, London, the International Center of Photography in New York and the United Nations. Sheikh is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York City.