The subjects of this photographic series are all portraitured. Adopting a frontal position, a posture of identification here short-circuited by the abstraction of facial features, yet major components of this exercise of classification. These features are almost hidden by a device commonly called "mask". Places and times differ, and the use of masks follows this logic. This tool of concealment, present in almost every society in the world, functions - in its most extreme metaphor and in its most basic utility - to hide, to terrify, to convert, to make appear, and to communicate with the beyond through a second state called "trance".

In the context of this photographic series, the gesture of wearing a mask is a well-known code among the people of Kinshasa. It is a piece of identity and enters into communication with the collective imagination while allowing the subjects who wear them in this series, to have easy access to places and locations dedicated to their activities. The masks they wear are therefore their passports, according to the artist Arsene Mpiana. And, the spatial context of their actions is highlighted here through some urban landscapes, generally polluted by waste. These people are garbage collectors, goods carriers, surface technicians, etc.. All photographed in the city of Kinshasa during their moment of activity and entry into trance, as before the wearing of the mask differs from that after.

Lined up in a row and all wearing various hats, the characters of the photographic series Passport do not let their faces be seen, for some out of fear of being recognized because they are ashamed of their activities; for others out of protection against certain illnesses and the toxicity of the garbage cans and the unhealthy environment they clean, and so on. This photographic series is, moreover, a pictorial metaphor evoking the mosaic, both visual and symbolic, of a certain social class, of which these characters, representative elements, are taken here as pixels of a set of emissaries of each of the activities that are very important in the functioning of the urban life of Kinshasa. The photographic artist was interested not only in the masks that their faces wear, but also in the whole of their profiles, in the particular impulses, influenced by the presence of this functional device means or "pass" for them in a number of social situations in the city.