Myth, Montage and Magic Realism: Rethinking the photograph as a discursive document

Foregrounding the photograph’s ontological ambiguity, this article examines a possible social agency for the photograph within an art discourse, which seeks to create space for political mobilization. Using Jacques Rancière’s theoretical development of an a priori logic of an equality of intelligence, it examines how an assumed equality, applied across various forms of photography, can provide a more productive framework to consider how images are used and reused. This paper argues that by assuming this a priori logic, we can move the debate beyond questions that are concerned with the originality of an image or its status as document and allows for a reconsideration of its use as a catalyst for debate.