The article focuses on the role contingency plays in photography art. Two possible models of conceiving of contingency are distinguished. The authors demonstrate their origin in the facts of language. The first model, illustrated by dice throwing, implies autonomy of the contingent and sheds light on how content of a photographic image emerges. Thus, contingency is constitutive of time in photography. It allows the authors to define photographic time as unity of the lasting and the discrete in a moment. A moment of shooting a photographic image is continued in the subsequent perception of the viewer, but this lasting perception appears to be discrete in itself.