# The Not So Benign World of Photography

![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article3.5c705a01b476.png)

## Metadata
- Author: [[Atika Qasim]]
- Full Title: The Not So Benign World of Photography
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://philosophynow.org/issues/143/The_Not_So_Benign_World_of_Photography

## Highlights
- With no empathetic attachment towards him, no knowledge of his story and identity, I was going to write a story for him: one that was to be his, but not from him. In this article, I want, to look briefly at how artists often overwrite the narratives and voices of their subjects to suit their own interests, and how, in doing so, they reduce conscious beings down to the mere objects of their attention.
- the rich of Lahore get to define and determine the stories of the poor, while the poor themselves have little or no power in or over the process of being defined.
- The marginalised have been speaking – or rather screaming – all the while: it’s just that we choose not to listen to their voices.
- ‘paternalistic benevolence’: you first define these people, then try to undefine, before redefining them to suit your agenda. Paulo Freire explains this phenomenon better in his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed