Thana Faroq and Nadia Gohar: The Passport Photo

Analysing identification imagery in two diverse projects

Thana Faroq, The Passport, The Passport Series (2017 - ongoing) 15 x 17 cm Courtesy of Chiara MacCall

With text by Lizzy Vartanian, arts writer and curator.

‘Honest,’ stripped back and free of any elaborate editing, the passport photograph is something that nearly every citizen of the world has. The identification image pictures its subject from the neck up. They are required to stare straight into the camera. Natural make-up only, accessories are not permitted. Serving not only as an identity document, but also as an object that grants its user permission to travel, it is a divisive image, just as it is an opportunistic one. In their recent work Thana Faroq and Nadia Gohar use the passport photograph to question its power and politics. 

In 2017 Yemeni documentary artist Thana Faroq, who is currently based in the Netherlands, started The Passport Project. The series consists of a book of portraits, letters and testimonials—all from people who are blocked from travel because of their country of origin and whose passport therefore becomes a barrier and, most of the time, it is these people who need to move more than anyone else: refugees, asylum seekers and stateless individuals. The black and white portraits lack light, the images seem extremely honest yet they carry an air of sadness: ‘I aimed to capture my subjects in the same way they were being looked at behind customs screening,’ explains Faroq, ‘This was my point of departure, which resulted into photographing people behind a milky pane of glass.’ 

Faroq’s subjects are stripped of any sense of personality. This has been taken from them in their minimalistic, reductive portraits. In contrast Nadia Gohar, an Egyptian artist based in Toronto, also uses the passport photograph in her work. Unlike Faroq however, Gohar’s images are colourful and full of character. Gohar is her own subject in Self Portrait (Passport Photo Do’s & Don’ts) (2017). In 25 passport-sized photographs Gohar is pictured in a number of ways. Sometimes she is wearing bright make -up, in others she is wearing glasses or loud jewelry. In some occasions the background of the image is dark while at times it is bright, like a kaleidoscope exploded inside the frame. In the bottom right corner however, is the ‘perfect’ passport photograph. Gohar looks straight to camera, none of her face is covered, her ears can be seen and the party make-up is gone. She has been stripped of her character yet, of all the images, this would be the only one that would be accepted by the Canadian passport guidelines. 

Both Gohar and Faroq question the power of the passport photograph with both removing the ‘human’ element from the identity image. Gohar places her portrait in small plastic bags, as though the photographs are some kind of scientific specimen or a piece of evidence. Whereas in Faroq’s Passport Project, the intimacy she finds in the letters she asks her sitters to write to her are protected in a book away from prying eyes. The portraits—that are often presented separately— create a border, not just for the individuals, but from the viewer exposed to them.