Occupy The Image

The popular protest of the global occupy movements sought to recreate open, egalitarian spaces to practice a more accessible democratic debate. Photographic images are playing an integral role in the challenge to traditional political discourses. From professional and amateur practices or, whether they are considered art, ephemera or memento: Can an assumed equality of intelligence, applied across all the various forms of photography provide a more productive framework to consider how images are used and reused? It is argued 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.