Abstract: The ideas of photography, different from photography, are constituted by a network of concepts that emerges out of its dissemination and reception, and features the regularity of the indicative discourses of photography as a practice and an image. The shift from photography to the concept of photography is not only a change in concepts, but also one in photographic historiography. This shift constantly questions and deconstructs the traditional history of photography, whose models closely follow technical progress or the beautiful images produced by great photographers, emphasizing the spectators/recipients of the photographic image that were marginalized in the mainstream history of photography. Within François Brunet’s theoretical framework of history of the concepts of photography, this article revisits the three cognitive paradigms of photography proposed by Paul Edwards, Philippe Dubois, and Roland Barthes, in order to delineate a network that constitute the concepts of photography and to explore a new way to think about photography.

Key words: ideas of photography, history of photography, cognitive paradigm of photography, photography theories