You arrive at the photo studio with your hair and makeup neatly done, with a wide smile that is camera-ready. Then comes the instruction: keep the smile low. A few seconds ago, you were ready to present yourself as you are, and now you are suddenly unsure how to pose. The passport photograph, going straight to your documents, leaves little room for emotion.
“It is a very standardised image. No smile, no teeth. It takes away individuality and reduces you to a structural identity,” says artist Raghava KK. His project Passport, created with acid-attack survivor Akkayamma and Ara Lumiere, takes such a rigid photograph and gives it room to change. The project enters Milan Fashion Week’s official calendar on September 26, alongside major fashion houses presenting their Spring/Summer 2027 collections. To Raghava, art entering this space creates an opportunity to question what fashion does with individuality. “True fashion is the expression of the uniqueness of an individual to a standard idea of beauty,” he says.
The project began in 2024, when Raghava met women associated with Ara Lumiere and conducted a workshop on art and cartooning. Akkayamma and another participant wanted to paint with him. The idea resurfaced when Kulsum Shadab Wahab, founder of Ara Lumiere and a longtime friend of Raghava, approached him about creating something for Milan Fashion Week.
There was little time, and he did not want to create something simply because it had to fit into a fashion event. The passport photograph became the starting point. “I didn’t want to make something commercial or want it to become pretty paintings selling a story. I wanted something that had a deeper connection to who these women are and what art can do. The act of creating – whether a decision, action, an artwork or an assertive act of existing – is the most powerful and the bravest act,” he says.
Each participant first had a genuine passport photograph taken at a public passport studio. Raghava then made around 100 interpretations of the images, working across digital and physical interventions. “Every time you see another person, you see them through your own biases. I wanted to add my biases to the photograph and see what happens when the image is no longer just a document,” he says.
The women, including another acid-attack survivor and art enthusiast, Maria, then entered the process with their own marks. Raghava conducted a workshop around what he calls ‘brave marks’, encouraging them to paint without worrying about whether a mark was technically perfect or conventionally beautiful. Akkayamma, however, was initially reluctant to touch the photograph. “She thought the photograph was beautiful and felt she was damaging it. I told her, ‘This is not necessarily you. This is my interpretation of you.’ Once she understood that, she started painting.” Raghava did not want the final work to carry his authorship alone. “I’m more like a midwife in this process. I’m managing the energy and encouraging her. I’m not trying to tell her what to make or how to make it,” he adds.
The final works therefore carry three layers: the institutional passport photograph, Raghava’s intervention and Akkayamma’s contribution. Some of the works also involve physical erosion of the photographs using acid, which hits the message loud and clear: You can’t erase the spirit!
The project also resists reducing Akkayamma and the other women to their experiences of violence. Their presence in Passport is about what they create after the photograph has been stripped of everything except the required identity markers. “The idea is to use this as a passport to show them as creators, not as survivors. We survive through creating. If you didn’t know anything about the series and just look at the works, you will see powerful women,” notes Raghava.