Histories of photography naturally put images in the foreground; even though photography is not text, the fact of studying metaphors linked with the introduction of photography in cultural representations, suggests that these metaphors have partially programmed our understanding and uses of photography, and even transformed our society’s relation to reality. Therefore it is essential to propose a history of the theory of photography where the study of metaphors used to describe the medium would be correlated to the study of images, both being in a reciprocal relationship of impulsion and correction. Beyond the assimilation of the history of photography to that of art, we would like to propose an alternative history pointing out the pragmatic uses of photographic images and the way in which they have come to shape our history.