If a photograph showed intentions instead of faces, would group portraits become harder to arrange?

Faces can be composed; intentions cannot. A portrait showing what everyone actually wanted at that moment would be almost impossible to arrange, because the smiling group contains reluctance, calculation, boredom, and love in unequal measure. Appearance is coordinated in a way that motive never is.

Worth holding when you look at any group presenting itself as unified, including your own family photographs. The surface is a joint production. If you want to know how something really stands with a group, you have to ask people separately, and the answers will not match, which is normal rather than alarming.