ABSTRACT
This chapter offers one path for developing a paradigm shift in photography theory. After reviewing the limitations of the prior hermeneutics of suspicion, we outline a more productive relationship with photography and reconsider the role of decontextualization as a constituent feature of the habitus of photography. This affordance is illustrated by Andre Malraux’s concept of the “museum without walls,” which then acquires site-specific re-instantiation through vernacular exhibitions. Specific exhibitions are reviewed to suggest how the critique of media dependency can be reworked into an ethic of spectatorship on behalf of photography’s democratic promise.
