In the beginning there were painting and the mirror. Before photography there were the lockets with portraits of loved ones, and the possibility of seeing oneself reflected, to recognise and adorn oneself. The image that remains over time and the one as fleeting as a glance. Photography is more mirror than painting: a mirror that freezes the instant, that has memory, in which things are imprinted forever. Fleeting and eternal at once. Photography changes the grammar of the image, which when reflected does not deceive, gives back the world as it is, whereas when imprinted on film it is transformed, depends on a point of view, becomes interpretation, suspended between the true and the false: one must leap beyond the mirror to understand it, considering anthropological, aesthetic and political questions. Joan Fontcuberta, one of the most respected and eclectic scholars of photography in the world, guides us on a poetic and theoretical journey through images, from the alchemical mystery of film and light to the dark magic of the black boxes in which data is gathered and computed: a journey between the illusions of the past and those of the present.