Pakistani photographer Harram Khurram has been selected to feature in Invisible Femme, an international exhibition highlighting the work of 25 women photographers whose practice comes from, or responds to, conflict-affected regions. The exhibition opened on 4 December at Campus Condorcet, Paris, and will travel to Barcelona on 28 January and Madrid on 30 January.
Khurram’s contribution comes from her series bombastic, which examines the human cost of U.S. drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, a campaign that peaked during the Obama administration, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths and displacing over a million people. The photograph displayed in Paris shows two young boys and two infants playing around a discarded popcorn-maker trolley in the courtyard of a group of mud houses. Makeshift screens of faded fabric hang across doorways, offering privacy while showing the fragility of the homes behind them.
The children’s clothes, a mix of hand-me-downs and repaired accessories, resemble styles seen on social media. The tension between survival and presentation is central to the series. By presenting her images in the format of a fashion catalogue, Khurram asks viewers to consider how appearances shape global attention and how stories of war and displacement are often overlooked when they do not match mainstream expectations.
Khurram says the project focuses on agency rather than victimhood. “Joy can be complicated, but it can still exist,” she says. “I wanted to show how children negotiate identity, joy, and play in situations that should never define childhood. This photograph, like the series as a whole, is a reminder that resilience does not erase inequality. It simply exists alongside it.”
A multidisciplinary artist with a master’s degree in the History of Art from the University of Oxford, Khurram works between documentary photography and still life, exploring the relationships between people and their surroundings. Her work often looks at war, displacement, belonging, and the ways people assert dignity in difficult conditions.
Khurram has previously exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary and Modern Art in Lahore and the Old Fire Station in Oxford and was runner-up for the inaugural Wolfson College Oxford Art Prize. In 2024, she curated an international artist residency supported by the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund.
Founded by French curators and visual researchers, Invisible Femme was created to address the under-representation of women, particularly from the Global South, in international photography. The initiative gives early-career photographers opportunities for exposure, travel, and dialogue, centring lived experience in discussions of war, migration, censorship, and visibility. The Paris exhibition runs throughout December before continuing its European tour in early 2026.