Rene Magritte was a Belgian artist, and one of his most notorious images is this one:
"This is not a pipe"
It looks like a pipe, but it isn't a pipe. It's a painting of a pipe, or perhaps more accurately now a digital photograph of a painting of a pipe. In his own words: "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe,’ I’d have been lying!"
Magritte's painting is one of a series entitled "The Treachery Of Images". It's an intriguing title whose meaning is explained by the not-pipe painting. When the image of something is treated as the real thing, the power of images becomes very clear. Photographs can very often go beyond real to the "hyperreal", the "simulation of something that never really existed", or an "authentic fake".
Umberto Eco described Disneyland as having hyperreality. It makes copies that look real but aren't, fake houses, fake nature and fake animals and people. The fakeness satisfies people because it fulfils their imagination: their daydream has been made flesh. They thus become more desirable and more attractive than the real thing: hyperreal in fact. The visitors queue up to get in, queue up for the attractions and get told where to stand and sit to get the experience in it's full fake realness.
Hyperreality is spreading. Super-Athletes, retouched photos of super-models, unnatural-looking manicured gardens, and (especially in America) whole towns and cities.
My photograph is not a rock.
Cheers, Tom.
la_spice
just a figment that BCUK and me have created 
But it's a lovely representation of a rock!