Images can lend weight to an argument but I don't think they've ever been over whelming - that said the weight they lend has certainly gone down over time. I t

Images can lend weight to an argument but I don't think they've ever been over whelming - that said the weight they lend has certainly gone down over time. I think this skirts around some larger truth that the greater weight a source - photographic images , science, religion - has the more the incentive there is to manipulate it and so the less weight it carries. The incentive - fundamentally the ability to change reality - is so great that it's hard to imagine it being otherwise.