Photographs do not speak, but they make us speak about them. This essay is driven by the magic of photographic images. Suspicions about their tricks lead Enrique Lista to wander through some particular stories told about photography: the magic of the presence-absence of a loved one (Roland Barthes), the magic that turns a urinal into art (Alfred Stieglitz and Marcel Duchamp), the magic of someone who was a magician without knowing it (Virxilio Viéitez) or the magic of complicit fables (Joan Fontcuberta). Lista neither can nor wants to explain that magical capacity that photographs still seem to have despite all the stories (or thanks to them); sharing the perplexity they still produce will be enough, and valuable.