A Few Things for Themselves

What characteristics inform the camera's view of things? Is a photograph or a film image capable of offering a view of an object simply for itself, regarded for itself, or must that view at its origin bring along a baggage of signification, metaphoric or otherwise? Can this question be disentangled from the way that the author of the image is to one degree or another inscribed in it, irresistibly leading the viewer back to the spatial realities that the image evokes?