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Initially published in the Summer 1978 issue of the journal October, this article addresses the particular relationship that artists have developed between photography and the mirror, proposing to consider the latter as the very reflexive moment of the former. Using a photograph by Brassaï as a starting point, the author examines the photographic self-reflexivity through the prism of the literary process of mise en abyme. Supported by linguistics, structural anthropology, and deconstruction theory, his argumentation aims to detach photography from its purely mimetic function in order to bring it closer to the discursive workings of language.