We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make and take a photograph, but we may not be as thorough when thinking about how to view a finished photograph. With the exception of studying photography as fine art, we typically approach a photograph as a technically accurate representation of what the photographer saw. A subject is a subject is a subject, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. And in all fairness, some photographs—snapshots and pics, really—are not meant to be more than tangible items that remind us of what we saw or experienced. Quick pics of a restaurant meal, selfies, and snapshots taken at events often fall into this category.
