Over the past fifty years we have witnessed the rapid development of analog and digital video recording technologies. Since 1965, video has made its way from specialized equipment available only to the powerful television industry with a monopoly on image distribution to a device that every middle-class family brings on vacation, and which is used for the documentation of everyday life. This text analyses the medium of video in itself, comparing it to film and TV in order to grasp what we might call the identity of video. The author recalls the first works of video art which are founding acts of video as an artistic medium, as well as the technical specification of the video camera. Referring to Yvonne Spielmann’s book "Video The reflexive medium," the author examines how video has metamorphosed from technology to medium, with a set of aesthetic languages that are specific to it.
Keywords: video, identity, medium