There’s also a more instinctive, less cerebral factor at play:

People’s reference point when assessing any realistic image that looks like a photograph is, “Would I have seen this scene with my own eyes had I been there?”

Since they know they can’t transport themselves back in time to be at the scene depicted in the image, viewers rely on “what the camera lens saw” as a surrogate for “what they would have seen.”

As it says in FAQ #120, “It always has been, and always will be, about human seeing.”