Redefining beauty

Beauty has been redefined by acid attack survivors who are now ready with a new venture- a calendar that features victims of horrific attacks.

The calendar has been launched to commemorate the third anniversary of the 'Stop Acid Attacks' campaign and is an initiative of 'Chaanv' an NGO.

"The idea was generated from the debate on the true meaning of beauty and society's present mindset of understanding the definition of beauty and misjudging those who have somehow lost their physical beauty," says Ashish Shukla, one of the members of Stop Acid Attack Campaign and Chaanv.

Unlike typical calendars, the calendar titled "Bello" that features 12 acid attacks survivors begins from the month of March 2015 and ends in February 2016.

The photos of the survivors portray their dreams which have been halted due to the heinous attack.

The photos for the calendar have been clicked by internationally acclaimed photographer, Rahul Saharan whose photo shoot in the past of the acid attack survivors Laxmi, Rupa, Ritu, Sonia and Chanchal drew attention from the international media. The calendar's cover photo has been designed by Shukla.

"We are releasing the calendar on March 8, which is also our Foundation Day and the next edition of the calendar will be released exactly a year later.

The photographs are taken by Rahul Saharan and also one photo each has been taken by a Belgian photographer Pascal Mannaerts and a Mumbai based photographer Surbhi Jaiswal," says Shukla.

The Belgian photographer says he was very excited to be associated with the campaign. He considers it to be a perfect example of how people fight with their fate to change their condition.

"For me this seems to be a perfect example of people in society who fight for their rights and recover from the bad things that happen in life," Pascal says.

The calendar is also scheduled to be launched on social media as well aims to "reach out to about 100 million people around the world to know about this one of its own kind of celebration of beauty."

"The photoshoot which is being released on the International Women Day aims to create awareness. If the people keep this calendar at home, they would point at their acceptance towards the survivors.

Further it wants to portray the dreams of the survivors who come from varied backgrounds and have gone through a lot in their lives," Rahul Saharan told PTI.