no, I agree with the above user that it would be better to federate images too, for at least the following reasons:

• redundancy: see the OP
• privacy reasons: images loaded from other instances inform the other instance that one is viewing those images, do you trust all of them?
• censorship reasons: some lemmy instances are blocked in my workplace and I can never look at images from them when browsing at work; others may be blocked in entire countries

If I’m not mistaken, Mastodon already does federate images to other instances, so it isn’t unheard of.