Frege's puzzles with pictures: Can we really do without sense to solve them?

Abstract Certain pairs of pictures can apparently give rise to iconic equivalents of Frege's first puzzle. To solve them, it is tempting to resort to a solution inspired by Frege, distinguishing reference of pictures from their sense. This possibility has been considered by several philosophers. Recently, Steenhagen (2021) has argued that we don't need the ‘sense’ and ‘reference’ distinction in a theory of depiction and pointed the way to Russellian-inspired solutions to iconic equivalents of Frege's puzzle. I will argue that these solutions do not have the same explanatory power as the new Frege-inspired solutions I defend, since they can only partially elucidate instances of Frege's first puzzle. To fully elucidate these puzzles, it seems necessary to consider the perspectival nature of pictures, which may well be a good equivalent of sense in pictures, according to a recent proposal by Burge (2022).