A picture of a sunset is laying on a shelf as a testimony of a (real sunset) moment which has one day occured.
The particular sunset (the particular moment) no longer exists.
Only the photograph and the current place at the current time with its ever-changing situation exists. The object and/or the image are vows of eternity. 
Death occurs constantly; life occurs constantly : exchanging each other place in a musical chair like game. To rely on the object and the image as a mean to extend the existence of things. 
A personnal collection of picture such as the family album carries a meaningful emotional value. 
An open-source image acting as an illustration of a phenomenon or a concept is only the ghost of an archetype. 
Self-referential or (null) it is even flatter than it seems.