One thing worth adding to the conservation that @Yael_Rice and I are having about portraiture and scientists' confusion of representation for reality is that *photographs aren't reality* either. /1

Photos may *seem* to be more real bc they are not only iconic (they look like what they represent), but they are also indexical (there's a physical relationship between the photo and the person it represents, just like there's a relationship between a foot & a footprint). BUT /2

photos are the product of human-made technology (into which subjectivity is built) as well as of the human photographer who snapped them. Photos are no more evidentiary than paintings of the people they represent no matter how closely they cleave to the contours of the face. /3