What I have tried to outline here is an example of the still under-researched field of the genealogy of images. Strictly speaking, it aspires to be a contribution to our understanding of the role of images in shaping layers of collective memory or of the socialization of historical images. This research cannot be done by a single person or by relying on professional competence in a single field. It requires the collaboration of archaeologists and film restorers (to evaluate the different generations of copies), semiologists (to analyze composition, staging, assembly and editing), historians of mass communication (to study comparatively the migration of a particular set of images across different media), contemporary historians (to evaluate thoroughly the specific circumstances of each recycling of the images concerned)… In other words, what is needed is collaborative research that brings together different disciplinary formations – in film, photography, the illustrated press, television, internet… and, by extension, museums, fine arts, commemorative architecture, textbooks... In short, an interdisciplinary exploration of the tortuous life of iconography. Today, as history professionals feel the need to use images, and when the media govern the socialization of history, it becomes imperative to impose rigor in the use of archives, subjecting source materials to meticulous critique. And the difficulty is enormous because of the precarious nature of the materials, their ceaseless migration in the media universe, and the almost total promiscuity with which the digital image is disseminated via the Internet. Making the old dreams true require, we feel it, new weapons.