  Some selected topics involving photonic and leptonic rare B decays are
reviewed. The interest in their measurement for the CKM phenomenology is
underlined. They are also potentially interesting in searching for physics
beyond the standard model. This is illustrated on the examples of the decays $B
\to (K,K^*) \ell^+ \ell^-$ and $B \to (\rho, \omega) \gamma$ by contrasting
their anticipated phenomenological profiles in the standard model and some
variants of supersymmetric models.
