La photographie

The cultural and artistic legitimacy of photography is recent. Long regarded as a simple tool, it is now being contemplated for its own sake in galleries and museums. Emerging with the rise of metropolises, the monetary economy, industrialization, and democracy, it was primarily the image of market society, the best way to document and actualize its values. However, while it aligned with modern industrial society, it now finds it difficult to meet the needs of an information society based on digital networks. Photography is therefore the subject of this book: in its plurality and its developments, from the document to contemporary art; in its historicity, from its appearance in the mid-19th century to the current blend of "art-photography," which leads André Rouillé to distinguish between "the art of photographers" and "the photography of artists.".