In recent years, a new photographic practice has emerged: capturing images from within video games themselves. Known as in-game photography, this movement now encompasses a wide range of approaches pursued by both amateur and professional photographers. Who makes up this rapidly expanding scene? Are we witnessing a renewal of photography as a medium? A dive into a vibrant field that challenges the very nature of images while probing the political and intimate stakes of contemporary society. For several decades, photography has had a presence within the world of video games. As early as the 1990s, photography appeared in titles such as Gekisha Boy<\/a> or through accessories like the Game Boy Camera<\/a>. Interest has recently been renewed by titles such as Lushfoil Photography Sim<\/a> (2024) and TOEM<\/a> (2021), both photography simulators, or more unusually Viewfinder<\/a> (2023), in which players solve puzzles by layering images and photographic planes. Yet while the link to photography seems obvious here, the camera generally remains at the service of gameplay; it is rarely diverted or interrogated as an autonomous artistic practice. Matteo Bittanti\u2014researcher, curator, and co-author with Marco De Mutiis<\/a> of Fotoludica<\/a>, Fotografia e videogiochi tra arte e documentazione (2025)\u2014observes that \u201cwhen a game is designed primarily to be photographed, the camera is rarely in tension with the world, and the work tends to slide toward visual tourism, ambience, or technical virtuosity.\u201d There are, however, notable exceptions, such as Beyond Good & Evil<\/a> (2003) or Umurangi Generation<\/a> (2021), which \u201cdeliberately reintroduce friction by treating the camera as a compromised instrument\u2014of surveillance, evidence, or extraction\u2014or by ironically staging the consumption of landscapes.\u201d This zone of friction within a video game universe has undoubtedly provided fertile ground for a scene that began to flourish in the early 2000s: in-game photography. The Arte program Le dessous des images<\/a> introduces it in these terms: \u201cvideo games were already a vast field of creation for their designers\u2014now they are becoming one for their users as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n