Really like what this article has to say:
So what does HDR have to do with Galen Rowell’s book ‘Inner Game’? Well, there’s a nice little chapter in there where he discusses why photos look different from life and why they affect us the way they do. To surmise what he said (as far as I understood anyway), he suggests that black areas of an image – the dark, sillouettes or underexposed areas, trigger a very primal emotion in us all. That of danger, or as he likes to suggest – shadows suggest mystery and it’s something we’ve always had to look out for in our existence.
Does ‘Bad’ HDR remove mystery?
From The Art of Adventure Photography by Bruce Percy
We don’t need every square inch of a photo to have the full dynamic range, detail or focus that we see every day. Nice to find a better explanation, one that resonates with something that makes us human, and is beyond just the technical details of a photo.