What a photograph shows us is how a particular thing could be seen, or could be made to look - at a specific moment, in a specific context, by a specific photographer employing specific tools.
Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
Machinery is aggressive. The weaver becomes a web, the machinist a machine. If you do not use the tools, they use you. All tools are in one sense edge-tools, and dangerous.