Thank you for the clarification. I can state that, even after switching to use the PhotosPicker native SwiftUI component, instead of the PHPickerViewController, the behavior (at least on a simulator) still persists -- hidden photos, once selected, are not readable by my client. I will assume that this is by design, and that Apple does not intend for third-party apps to have access to hidden content, except for the Photos app.

We stopped using List and switched to a LazyVStack and it works as expected now.

Actually - how DOES AsyncImage know that it's time to cancel a load operation if a cell zooms on -- and then off -- the screen? Wouldn't it need to use the help of onAppear and onDisappear methods? I have a related question here: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/716998#716998021