It's always been more like painting than anything resembling a truthful representation of reality. In fact, the first ever photograph [1] much more closely resembles a painting than anything else, which is ironic.

All advancements have simply given us more control in how painterly we render our photographs, but have never _really_ brought us closer to the truth.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography#/media/...