IMO this is a common mindset to which aviD photographers are prone. The idea that if not photographed, the potential significance of the image is fa “forever lost” image. True, the physical image can’t be made, but the real miracle is that the significance of the scene can be captured by the sentient mind and described with language. Many of the significant “images” common to large masses of mankind were never “captured” ...but are vivid images nonetheless:
a man on a cross....
The Red Sea parted....
“Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light ....?
... and innumerable images forever able to be brought to mind by recall of favorite poems:

...that “road in the wood” and the “other taken” that “made all the difference”

“...dashing thru the snow in a one-horse open Shay, through the fields we go....”

... stopping by a wood on a snowy evening...”

“When the rooster crows at the break of dawn; look out the window....”

“ She tied him to her kitchen chair... and cut his hair... and from his lips she drew the Halelujia...”

That “never healed wound” of “loss of one dear to the heart...”

and to those entranced by the zen poems of haiku the classic ones of Basho and Issa and others draw forth amazingly vivid images..

So are a camera’s images the only ones of cultural significance?

IMO the development and refined use of language is the ultimate image generator, bar none!

Dave