When was photography invented, in 1826 with the first permanent photograph? If we depart from the technologically oriented accounts and consider photography as a philosophical discourse an alternative history appears, one which examines the human impulse to reconstruct the photographic or the evoking of light . It’s significance throughout the history of ideas is explored via the Platonic Dialogues, Iamblichus’ theurgic writings, and Marsilio Ficino’s texts.

This alternative history is not a replacement of other narratives of photographic history but rather offers a way of rethinking photography’s ontological instability.