Throughout my time covering arts from West Asia and North Africa, I've started countless articles with the same argument: Western mainstream media has misrepresented the Middle East as a place of violence, bloodshed and religious fanaticism. Rarely do West Asian and North African (WANA) artists get the chance to represent themselves authentically. Now, I find I can no longer justify using this opening remark. This is not necessarily the result of Western media having had a change of heart, rather, it is the determinism and resolve of the region's photographers that has pulled down the proverbial wall of Western visual theatrics.

We've come a long way from Edward Said's Orientalism, perhaps one of the most important texts on how the West has constructed an East that is other, that exists only in relation and in opposition to the West in a 'post-colonial' landscape. Not unproductive to engage with critically, but within this evolving cultural landscape, it is necessary to start asking new questions. It is true that dominant aesthetic regimes have continuously depicted the region as a two-dimensional landscape of violence and itself an act of violent barbarism misrepresentation intended to flatten and dehumanise us. The visual modes of representing the region have time and time again cast us as savages; as unfeeling, almost inanimate (we are human and we too feel pain). However, since Orientalism, there has been a notable rise in more positive, or, if not positive, then at least genuine representations of the WANA region (that is, if you know where to look). With the creation of wide-reaching photographic networks led by publishing houses and Instagram accounts dedicated to the regionfrom Middle East Archive and Waasta to Everyday Middle East and Takweer-no more are we subject to narrow depictions, which even warped how WANA people view themselves both locally and in diaspora.

The horrific, yet very real images coming out of Gaza from on-the-ground photographers like Samar Abu Elouf for example, have drastically changed the way we consume imagery and think about conflict photography in the region. This shift was perhaps the catalyst for a growing demand for WANA photographers to capture their own communities. Typically the task of Western war photojournalists, the Israeli-imposed restrictions on foreign journalists entering Gaza have forced Gazan photographers to step into this role to portray the crimes perpetrated against them. Adam Rouhana's work, on the other hand, offers a slightly different perspective on Palestine. Rouhana documents moments of daily joy, of ritual, of texture and warmth. This year alone, Rouhana's powerful work has been exhibited in Kyotographie, Japan; Photo London; and Tasweer Photo Festival, Qatar. His photographs showing a boy eating a watermelon, children playing in a reservoir, a horse rearing its sublime body-ar an attempt at reclaiming and battling pervasive stereotypical depictions of Arabs.

In Lebanon, Myriam Boulos has altered visual representations of Lebanon and the Arab identity through her work on sexuality, gender and desire, with a special focus on marginalised communities. In the process, she's become one of the most in-demand photographers from the region. Her work is tactile and immersive, sometimes overwhelmingly so; the shot of three women emerging from the flames of a protest in Beirut, 2019, for example, allows the viewer to empathise with these subjects beyond mere pity. These women are active, they move out of the frame, and they are colourful, complex characters. We see them almost smirking behind their masks, despite the saturated fire that rages behind them, suggesting a resistance to the tired narrative of wailing women. Though this is a very real scene from a very real turbulent Lebanon, it could be plucked from a movie. Boulos is a master at amplifying and exposing Lebanese life, with her high-intensity flash, in a way that demands respect and dignity for her subjects.

Whether it's the electric atmosphere of a street protest or a tender moment between lovers, Boulos' lens is fiercely attentive to the body as a site of power, resistance and pleasure, especially in her work on feminist and queer collectives in Beirut. What makes her images particularly urgent is their ability to resist categorisation: Boulos offers an alternative visual lexicon for Lebanon, one that defies the binaries of victim or rebel that so often shape Western consumption of the region. Her growing international recognition speaks not just to her talent, but to a global hunger for these nuanced and honest images. Beyond Boulos' flash-driven street scenes, her quieter work with feminist and queer collectives is tender and intense. Close-ups of body gestures, embroidered banners or shared glances deepen our understanding: these aren't stereotypes, but people with stories and desires. Boulos rewrites the visual grammar of scarred landscapes, infusing them with textures of solidarity, desire and mindful presence.

Though their work is very different, I am reminded of the ways in which Farah Al Qasimi-who has received a room at the TATE Modern in London and more recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship-uses flash, colour and surrealism to complicate the region and offer nuance to her (largely) women subjects. Operating more often in Gulf settings, she also redefines representations of scarred landscapes, this time through surrealism and play. Her pastel-hued images, saturated flashes and staged mise-en-scènes reframe contexts commonly associated with desert, oil and austerity into aesthetic worlds that are vivid, questioning and often humorous. By spotlighting women in whimsical domestic tableaux or odd juxtapositions (a veil draped over consumer objects, neon light framed through a broken window), she expands how we visually engage with landscapes previously documented in stark monochrome or duress.

Across the industry, it has become clear that WANA photographers are dominating the scene. It's a joy to watch photographers from the region play with narrative and form, instead of falling into the trap of recreating visuals made and regurgitated by Western photographers and publications. It's also a joy to see so many women-historically excluded from the fielddominating this scene. The global photo community is signalling a demand for innovative lens-based art made by locals in the regioneven foreigners seem bored of images of shisha pipes and headscarves blowing in the desert winds. I hope the reason for this shift runs deeper than mere necessity provoked by the events in Gaza. These image-makers are not just breaking down decades of unjust photographic practices in the region, but they are also contributing to the canon and developing the medium, redefining aesthetic regimes in powerful and impactful ways.

MYRIAM BOULOS holds a master's degree in photography from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. Boulos took part in national and international exhibitions including at ICP (New York), Huis Marseille (Amsterdam), and l'Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris). Her work has been published in Aperture, Time Magazine, GQ Middle East, Vogue Arabia, and Vanity Fair France, among other publications. Boulos was awarded the Eugene Smith Fellowship, PHmuseum Women Photographers Grant, Grand prix ISEM, and is an Arab Documentary Photography Program and Joop Swart Masterclass alumni. In 2021 she joined Magnum as a nominee. In 2023 her book, What's Ours, was published by Aperture. Boulos was a Foam Talent in 2021 and her portfolio was included in Foam Magazine #61: Talent.

DALIA AL-DUJAILI is a British-born Iraqi writer, editor, and producer based in London. She is mostly interested in writing and commissioning stories on emerging creativity from the SWANA region and diaspora, migrant narratives, and reporting on community-led stories from the margins.