Photographs are unlike other pieces of artwork in that they rely on a subject, someone whose image is being captured rather than designed. Benchallal has very direct aims with her photographic work, but how much authorship does she really have? How responsible is she for developing the story or is she merely documenting what is already there? 

In Into the Universe of Technical Images, a collection of translated essays, the Czech-born philosopher Vilen Flusser gives a significant amount of responsibility of the image directly to the apparatus – the camera- rather than the photographer. He describes those behind the photographic machines as “envisioners” and that “the images they visualize are produced not by them but by the apparatus and, in fact, automatically.”  (p. 36) In one of his essays, entitled To Envision, Flusser goes into detail describing the difference between a writer and an envisioner who is “pressing a button”. Both rely on technology and machinery but he says that “envisioners don’t stand over apparatuses the way a writer stands over a typewriter… they are bound much more tightly to the apparatus than a writer to the machine” (p. 36) He argues that this is because a writer may write without the use a typewriter but a photographer cannot take pictures without a camera, following through that thus the work of the photograph is intertwined and utterly dependent upon the machine, a machine that frames the way in which the image is created. However, there is much evidence to suggest that this is not true: the photographer does, in fact, have significant control over how the photograph turns out. Benchallal’s photographs ooze of authorship and pro-active photography. Take, for example, the following image:

 The scene here has been carefully thought out. The woman is wearing modern clothes, a tank top and shorts, which is a stark contrast to other women Benchallal has photographed who are typically more covered. The sea in the background, combined with the words “liberte” on the life ring, all create a vivid impression of freedom. This is not to say that the camera plays no role whatsoever, of course. In the above photograph, the woman is ignoring the presence of the camera and the photographer, looking away from the viewer. In some cases, the effect of being watched changes the way the subject reacts: they look into the camera.

In this photograph, the woman standing on the stage is framed by the unfocused, close-up shots of the faces of several young girls gazing towards the camera. The symbolism of the photograph – the image of a strong, modern-looking, high-heel wearing woman addressing an audience of men from a position of power – is enhanced by the innocent and quizzical expressions of the young girls. This is what tells the story. But the camera itself had a direct effect on the creating this image; the young girls are not looking towards the future viewers of the printed photograph, catching the eye of the audience to transmit their story. They are looking at Benchallal’s camera. This shows the role of the camera as an apparatus in the photograph: the physical presence of the machinery affects the setting and can alter the way in which the image is captured. 

Despite the role the camera plays in capturing the image, it is of utmost importance to keep in mind that there is an individual standing behind the camera. The photographer has the ultimate control of choice over what images are captured. As a documentary photojournalist, Benchallal does not set up the scenes to fit her artistic story-telling requirements but rather, as she says, “captures what is there.” This does not mean that she has no control, however. On the contrary, Benchallal makes many choices and decisions about how to portray “what is there” to her viewers. 

In the world of photography, these choices are called "necessary decisions". In Three Kinds of Realism About Photographs, Jiri Benovsky explains that a photographer has “a range of possible settings at her disposal”, which includes everything from the technical aspects such as aperture, shutter speed and focal length to editing, framing and the baseline decision of what to take a picture of and what to omit. Making these choices means that the “photographer’s intentions, beliefs, and decisions do play a central role in the process of production of a photograph”, it is simply not true that a camera in itself is solely responsible for the final product. The photographer as an individual makes both personal and artistic choices, both of which have influence the final result, “depending on what the photographer wants to convey, that is, depending on the story she wants to tell us with her photograph.”