Major artistic phenomenon at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, contemporary photography is not limited to a trend within contemporary art. Photography extends to the general category of images. It encompasses experimental research in the age of the virtual, alternative forms of information in the age of new media, the history of modernism at a time when the status of the artwork is being questioned; but also the issue of documentation, or conversely, the staged image, and finally the trend of a recomposed photography after the digital break. This essay, richly illustrated, explores this period that begins at the threshold of the 1980s and continues to the present day, bringing together works that are different yet all imbued with the same concern for ethics. How do we see, what do we look at, what is the balance between fiction and reality? By imposing the stability of its considered forms in a world of blurred messages, contemporary photography names a community of creative practices that places photography at the heart of the sensibility of our time.