The Department of Near Eastern Antiquities at the Musée du Louvre boasts a very rich archive of photographs. Most notably, excavations carried out in Iran over many years produced a major corpus of photographs illustrating archaeological excavations from the late nineteenth century up to the 1960s. Methods of excavation and decisions concerning publication have considerably influenced our understanding of the sites. Therefore, the study and appreciation of these photographs can provide a new look – sometimes the very first – at previously unpublished ensembles (excavation sites, archaeological strata, architectural remains) that had been merely drawn or described. The result is a reworking of our relationship to the sites, as exemplified here by Susa, the famous archaeological site in Iran.