Skin Project

A story in pictures about skin, made in 2017 in Delhi, Agra, Bhopal and Mumbai.
Everything started when on Instagram I accidentally came across the photo of an albino girl, Namira, portrayed in a suburban train in Mumbai by an Indian photographer. I madly fell in love with her, but I had hard times finding her out in a city of 21 million inhabitants, never losing hope.
The only thing I knew about her was that she could only see at night time.
Albinos have a great visual appeal, a particular beauty, but in many countries they are marginalised, victim of prejudice because of their skin, and for this reason it’s not easy to approach them. They are shy and suspicious, women are tormented by the fear of not being able to get married.

A fate of marginalisation affects women hit by a particularly hideous kind of violence, so common in the Indian subculture: the acid attack. For trivial reasons (a refusal or jealousy), women are punished by acquaintances (almost never by strangers): scarred forever, almost killed, and rejected by society. Their skin melts, and if you do not intervene in time, they even come to lose sight and hearing.
Now, several women who have suffered this attack and who will always carry the marks on their skin, want to raise their voices against this crime, like Soniya Choudhary. In Agra, the town of Taj Mahal, there’s a bar (the Sheroes Hangout) run only by acid attacked women.