You don’t need to explicitly use qualifiers like item.photo == '' or item.photo != ''. Like in JavaScript, an empty string will be evaluated as false.
Your views will be much cleaner and readable as well.
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.3.0/angular.min.js"></script>
<div ng-app init="item = {photo: ''}">
<div ng-if="item.photo"> show if photo is not empty</div>
<div ng-if="!item.photo"> show if photo is empty</div>
<input type=text ng-model="item.photo" placeholder="photo" />
</divUpdated to remove bug in Angular