The invention of photography was also the birth of an idea that was both logical and political: that of an exact and natural or a-technical image (an art without art) and for this reason accessible to all, an art for all. Since the French daguerreotype law of 1839, this idea has continued to develop in European and North American culture. The aim here is not to offer a history of ideas about photography, or to condemn bourgeois ideology, but rather to show how the development of techniques and uses is linked to this idea of photography. It is the genealogy of this idea, rather than its critique, that allows us to understand its radicality and productivity, many traces of which can be found in current debates on the technology, philosophy and aesthetics of the image.