How do you access files outside of root

In many books, it is recommended to store uploaded files outside of root for security reasons, which makes perfect sense. But I am wondering how do you provide access to those files then?

Say www is the root and I make a uploads directory one level above it, so both www and uploads are inside Apache folder. How can I display images stored inside uploads? <img src="/../uploads/asshole.png"> won't work as everything in "/../" won't be accessible. If I just return one single image, maybe I can read the file using file_get_contents or something and return it, but what if I wanna show a gallery of images.
 
Why not just put your uploads folder inside your www folder?

You're right. I was confused between uploaded files that should be used/shown (party photos) and those that should be inaccessible (nude photos).
 
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