Les Carnets du BAL is a series set up to work on what is at stake in the contemporary image and to take the notion of the visual document in all its variety. Each subject brings together theoretical contributions and presentations and readings of works by artists, philosophers, historians, anthropologists and critics, drawing on examples from photography, video and cinema. The second volume takes the image that is already there — found, appropriated, recycled — and argues that such practices on their own make up a parallel history of art and of images in the modern and contemporary period. It comes out of the seminar held at the EHESS in November 2010.