To piggyback, there was a thread a while back about a python library that would generate QR code images.

Not just the thing where the QR code is blown up so large you can insert a corporate logo, but you'd feed it a source image and it would make the image itself into a QR code.

I thought I'd bookmarked it but cannot find it and searching around has only found me the type of QR code generator I detailed earlier in the post, which doesn't look like an actual raster image.

(Apparently it dealt better with logos and shapes than full on photos of people but was capable)

It's not Python, but this might still fit your bill:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30162233