In Camera Lucida, Barthes writes, “A specific photograph, in effect, is never distinguished from its referent (from what it represents)” and comments on the “fatality” of people’s inability to see the medium, seeing only the subject of the photograph. This reminds me of the painting the Treachery of Images by René Magritte, which shows a pipe with the the words “ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe) underneath. Although Magritte’s work is a painting instead of a photograph, it carries the same idea that people often think of an image of an object as the object itself, instead of as an image. I sometimes feel that photography is a means of conveying an idea rather than an art form because the photographer arguably plays a small role in the chemical and physical creation of the photograph, and focuses more instead on capturing the subject at a particular moment, or composing the subject of the intended photograph in reality. However, the ability to convey an idea through the image composition can be considered an art as well.