“A drawing of a tree shows not a tree but a tree being looked at” 

― John Berger

“The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. That is, the identification of the subject of a photograph always dominates our perception of it - as it does not, necessarily, in a painting” Sontag On Photography p92

‘One finds oneself entering the world of the simulacrum, a world where as in Plato’s Cave the possibility of distinguishing between reality from the phantasm, between the actual and the simulated, is denied’

(Krauss, 1984, p.62)

Barthes also notes- 

I cannot reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the ‘ordinary’; it cannot in any way constitute the visible object of a science; it cannot establish an objectivity, in the positive sense of the term; at most it would interest your studium: period, clothes, photogeny; but in it, for you, no wound -Barthes Camera Lucida 1977 (p73).

I agree somewhat with what he elaborates on from the quote. As photographers we make images for some sort of reason, whether its for a personal family album, or if it is an art project exploring time or space where the actual finished image is irrelevant but the actual taking of it is the purpose the end photograph has been undertaken by ourselves and means something to the owner. This can also mean something to other viewers but it is possible for some images to be solely for us. Our personal relationship with the image with the reasons that motivated us to take them can affect the image maker in a way that cannot affect other viewers. I think there it is not a polarised idea that either an image is or is not but it simply can be.