I agree, Tim. There's something metaphysically disturbing about attributing a whole inner life and personality to the person in a picture the way we do when we see a face — and then being told the person doesn't even exist.https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1098590657978003457 …
Indeed, it's a profound point, made elegantly by E M Forster, that we can understand the characters in a literary work more perfectly than real persons. Life is stranger than fiction, and real persons more tantalizingly elusive -- their demonstrable existence notwithstanding.