Some years ago, while travelling on a local train, visual artist Monica Dhaka noticed a passenger who was uncomfortable sitting next to a woman with acid attack scars and later asked her to move away. Her photography project, ‘Before You See The Scar’, was born from this encounter and her desire to shift the way acid attack survivors are seen and spoken about.
The exhibition, currently on view at Dhoomimal Art Centre in Connaught Place, has been created in collaboration with survivors associated with Delhi’s Brave Souls Foundation. The project moves away from images of violence towards questions of identity and dignity.
Dhaka began the project by researching how acid attacks and survivors are represented in the media and visual projects. Much of the conversation focused on violence, trauma and scars, with less attention on the lives of those who survived, she says. When she asked those around her what came to mind when they heard “acid attack”, pain, trauma and scars were among the most common responses. The scar, she felt, had become both the first and last thing people associated with a survivor.
Challenging the gaze
Conceptually divided into two parts, the first part of the exhibition presents photographs that resemble landscapes of mountains, earth, water and tree bark. However, these are extreme close-ups of the skin of acid attack survivors.
The photographs are presented without titles or explanations, with Dhaka deliberately withholding their context at first. She wants the viewers to first encounter the images without knowing what they were looking at, and only later discover that the landscapes were actually photographs of scarred skin. “I wanted to give viewers a fair chance to just look at those pictures without any preconceived notions,” she says. “I want to challenge the gaze, because when they know that it is a survivor’s skin, there is a shift. People start rethinking what they saw and what they were appreciating in somebody’s own skin.”
The section also takes the same close-up photographs and turns them into abstract patterns through mirroring and cropping. From a distance, the images appear intricate and visually pleasing. Up close, the lines, folds and textures of the skin become visible.
For Dhaka, the patterns reflect how survivors are viewed from the outside. “When you actually look at these abstract patterns from a distance, they look beautiful, they look intricate and make the viewer curious. But when you actually go close and look at the pictures, you can see each and every line and each and every curve and colour. For me, it symbolises the survivor’s life.”
Beyond the scar
The second part brings the context into focus, with eight black-and-white portraits and writings based on Dhaka’s conversations with survivors at the Brave Souls Foundation — model and activist Reshma Bano Qureshi, Premlata, Suniti, Mumta, Monika Pooja, Preeti and Shabnam.
Dhaka deliberately photographed the women smiling, wanting them to be part of the conversation rather than appear only as subjects of tragedy. “I wanted to give them a voice to tell the world how they want to be seen because we are more than just our scars,” she says.
Before photographing them, she spent time at the foundation, eating and talking with the women and conducting group and one-on-one interviews. To explain her approach to photographing their scars, Dhaka showed the women a close-up of elephant skin. Most mistook it for tree bark or a tree trunk until she revealed the full image.
Dhaka was conscious of avoiding the familiar question, “What happened to you?” Instead, she wanted to ask how the women wanted society to see them. During one group discussion, Shabnam, who was 13 at the time of her attack, said she did not want to be called ‘bechari’. She spoke about being placed in a box by society, with people assuming she could not study, work, or get married.
The women also spoke to her about everyday experiences rarely included in conversations around acid attacks. Going to a park or restaurant, for instance, can involve covering their faces because of stares, laughter or people worrying that their children might be frightened. “Some said they were no longer invited to family functions,” adds Dhaka.
The experience also changed Dhaka’s own understanding of acid attacks. For the artist, the project also raises questions about how society defines beauty and judges people through their bodies. “I just feel sometimes we all are so privileged, that we can go out in a park or to a restaurant without thinking about anything,” Dhaka says. “I’m humbled. I started appreciating what I have and it’s grounded me so much.”
Dhaka hopes to take the exhibition to more cities in India and extend the work through conversations with survivors, possibly as a podcast or documentary. She has also approached organisations in the UK and hopes to develop the project there, with the work set to be exhibited at the Photo Fringe 2026 exhibition next month. “This is an ongoing project,” she says. “I’m still not done.”