Benchallal makes some very deliberate choices when it comes to her photographic techniques. The most immediately apparent stylistic element of her photographs is that they are all taken in black and white.  Photographs have the ability to ‘freeze’ time; what is depicted is the moment captured, not always reliant on context or space or time, but simply frozen forever more. Amelia Jones argues in The “Eternal Return”: Self‐Portrait Photography as a Technology of Embodiment that “the photograph, after all, is a death‐dealing apparatus in its capacity to fetishize and congeal time.” The black and white effect of Nadia’s photographs only accentuate this notion. The photographs have an age old, timeless look, one that continues into the future and encroaches on the past.  Depicting her images in black and white was a very conscious decision on the part of Benchallal, one that she took because she believes that “black and white picture has a power of putting you right into a story.” Benchallal sees black and white photography as having “big emotional and historical issues” because of the way in which they reach the viewer on a more emotional level and pulls them into her story. She uses this technique to gain a more sympathetic audience. 

Another technique Benchallal employs is a variation in aperture and shutter speed in order to create a blurred effect. In this image, two women wearing veils are walking down a street at nightfall. They face away from the camera, seemingly in conversation, and one of the women clutches the arm of the other. A striking characteristic of this photograph is the blurry, slightly out of focus look it has.  This effect comes from a combination of the aperture and the shutter speed variations and it creates an appearance of movement and of speed. These women are walking with a purpose. What I find intriguing, however, is the story behind this image. Benchallal explained during her interview that these women are hurrying home from an afternoon at the beach. The call for curfew had gone off and they are hurrying home to escape the night. This story is not transmitted in the photograph though.  This shows that the photograph can tell a different story than the reality; the message presented is utterly visual and it up to the viewer to discern and interpret the image.