Ironically, especially in the digital age, reality is hard to find. Most images we see have been  'shopped, tweaked or enhanced in some way. 

IMO, the only thing that counts is the emotional impact an image has on the viewer. If there's only one road to salvation, that sounds more like religion than art to me, but then I'm neither artist nor acolyte.

*"As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."  - Paul Krugman *

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken