files outside of the web tree

I have managed to build include files and store them above my public folder and the called pages manage to find them from the public folder and properly include them. My problem is with the html src= attribute. I have uploaded photos to be included in my web pages and I didn't want them in the web tree so I moved them above it also. I use php to get the root folder's name and then I add "../photos/" to the filename's path, but now my tags can't find them. Can I not do this?