Introduction: If we think about the reasons behind our choices and actions, we will see that there are always patterns and dualities in our actions and judgments that determine the course of our personal and social life. The dualities of good and evil, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong, and wise and foolish are a few examples. Such dualities are as old as humanity itself and have always governed our lives in different ways. Since patterns and dualities are determined by space and time, they cannot be considered absolute, and out of this arises an uncertainty about the nature of our actions. Therefore, to discover the causes of patterns and dualities, one needs to understand their origins. And understanding something’s origin requires reviewing its “material” and “spiritual” history and analyzing them using relevant methods. Among humanity’s most thought-provoking actions is art, which has manifested itself throughout history in various forms and to different interpretations. Art has always been a very significant phenomenon due to its aesthetical and ontological aspects, though its definition varies depending on the characteristics of each historical period. To understand artworks and judge their quality, one needs to look at concepts and ideas from humanity’s different eras. Understanding the origins of our patterns and views gives us insight into the artist’s action and the viewer’s reaction. In the process of gaining this understanding, a network of relationships develops between works of art and the “subject,” influencing our views on art. A thread in this network is the influence of the artist’s mind and lived experience, because an artwork is a reaction by an author to his existence in the universe; in other words, it is a reflection from the artist’s psychic structure expressed through particular forms and content. At this stage, we can analyze the essence of artworks based on psychoanalytic theories. Another thread in the web is the influence of paradigms such as language, law, culture, and every social structure on the artist and the viewer. It is not, however, completely separate from the role of the artist’s and the viewer’s mind, because symbols are inevitably related to our psychic structure and forge an everlasting bond between the subject and the object. Some art forms are based on the sense of sight, meaning they involve creating visual embodiments or representations of the world of “objects.” Among such art forms, photography has always dealt with sight, the object, and reality. Regardless of type, it seeks to preserve space and time, making it a stage for the life and death drives to express themselves. Based on this feature, a photograph contains something from the past, while the past itself still exists. Therefore, although photos eclipse the past, the past falls behind us. This leads to a gap between the subject and the photo, but, using his assumptions, the subject mentally reproduces the concepts and elements in the photo to fill that gap. Thus, the subject’s assumptions, which are products of symbols and his psychic structure, play an essential role in the photographer and the viewer; a role that varies depending on space and time. Our unwavering desire to preserve moments and “objects” through photos (as evident by the special significance images hold for us) makes photography an effort to preserve the subject’s assumptions, which are shaped by dualities, patterns, archetypes, education, etc. The conceptual branch of photography seeks to explore existing social concepts and enables the artist to develop his own concepts. In conceptual photography, which is the opposite of documentary photography, the artist seems to enjoy complete creative freedom. As discussed earlier, however, this freedom is influenced by the artist’s and the viewer’s assumptions, becoming bound by some unknown rules. Therefore, conceptual photography, an art form of the contemporary era—an era seemingly dedicated to freedom of thought and demythologization—succumbs in form and content to the very thing it criticizes, and reveals truths at the cost of telling a lie. To make this clearer, let us look at class and gender “antagonisms” (social interactions built on conflicts and differences). The ideology that arises out of class antagonism says that “the capitalists—‘external enemies’—are holding me back from my true place and identity, and it is only after defeating them that I can retrieve my identity.” Similarly, gender antagonism argues that women will win back their true identity after defeating the chauvinistic and patriarchal oppression. Žižek believes that by gaining a radical view of antagonism, one can reverse that relationship and say that “it is not this external enemy who is holding me back from my identity, but every kind of identity acts as its own obstacle before becoming realized.” This recalls Hegel’s famous master–slave dialectic: To evade restraining his desires, the slave creates himself a master; that is, the slave releases his desires, which have innate characteristics, by distracting himself with the oppression from an external enemy (Karimi, 2011: 142–143). Such conflicts have always existed and have a long psychological history. The conclusion is that the assumptions shaped by symbols and by the psychic structure are among the most influential factors in the repetition of any aesthetical and ontological action. Therefore, once we understand the origins of such assumptions, we can a) facilitate understanding the nature of our reactions to our existence in the universe by reexamining how we view art, especially conceptual photography and its related topics, and by reducing our resistance against challenging our views on artistic creation, aesthetics, and even the dominant thinking of our times; and b) employ that understanding in making and analyzing art. All of this points to the fact that understanding the psychic structure is unavoidable. The totem and the taboo are two of the important phenomena that influence the human psychic structure and actions, because they embrace people’s relationship with each other and with nature, and shape many of our symbols and dualities. A totem was a powerful being or thing that was believed to protect a tribe, was influenced by the living environment of that tribe, and inspired special rituals. Seen both as sacred and forbidden, taboos stemmed from the characteristics of the subject and nature, and governed the social rules of primitive people. A brief look at the totem and the taboo reveals that they have existed throughout history in various forms and have influenced every generation, because all of our social relationships and interactions have their basis in the ethical dos and don’ts that are built upon the contemporary characteristics of the subject and the object. Therefore, understanding the totem and the taboo and psychoanalytically analyzing them make it possible to understand the origin of patterns and dualities, and the resulting knowledge can be used to explore the artist’s action and the viewer’s reaction. Moreover, given conceptual photography’s ontological aspect and its relationship with social life concepts, understanding its nature may reveal the zeitgeist of a historical period and lead us to the answer to two questions: Do the totem and the taboo exist today in new forms? And if yes, how do they influence the subject’s knowledge in creating and viewing conceptual photography?