Like the French railway system, photography had existed for over a decade before Napoleon III came to power. The French Academy of Science had been made aware of a completely new reprographic method – the daguerreotype – in 1839, but during the decade that followed only the most affluent could afford to own a daguerreotype or calotype. The early 1850s, however, saw a major turning point with the introduction of new, cheaper and faster processes which opened up photography to commercialisation on a vast scale, removing the medium from the exclusive preserve of scientists and specialists and ensuring its popularity. One of the period's most famous commercial photographers, André-Adolphe Disdéri, set up his hugely successful photographic studio in the centre of Paris in 1852, and over the following years the number of photographers and photographic societies expanded rapidly. Demand for glass, paper and chemicals soared, egg-production had to be increased to meet the need for albumen, and it has been estimated that by 1860 33,000 people were making a living from photography in Paris alone. Twenty years after the initial announcement of the discovery, photography had grown into a major industry and the Second Empire became the first period in French history to leave a photographic record of itself.

By the end of the Second Empire, photography had also left its own distinctive trace on the writing of the period.