Nothing's a perfect record, but a thing's purpose can be to serve as a record. Like if you stick seismometer readings into an academic paper, everyone will know there's noise, but that's okay. You did your best. But there are some changes we can agree are bad there. Now, if you stuck your seismometer into an autotuner and sync'd it with led zeppelin, that's okay. Just not if you're putting that into your paper.

For a long time, photographs were typically used as records. Even when they were art, they were typically records of something. Soon, we'll be typically doing so much more with them and will have to accept that photos can, but frequently won't serve as records.