Issue 13: Image, Language, and the Act of Seeing

Essay

The Hook of the Image

What draws the eye? What grabs our attention, before we even understand why we're looking? In art, and perhaps in life, there's often a hook — a moment of seduction, a shimmer of spectacle. Nudity, horror, beauty, violence. These are not necessarily truth, but they bait the gaze. They stop us in our tracks.

I began thinking about this while observing how frequently artists — especially women — portray themselves nude. There’s a long tradition of this, and often it is framed in terms of vulnerability, autonomy, or resistance. But what fascinates me is the doubleness of the gesture. The body displayed can indeed be an assertion of presence — but it also operates within a regime of looking that has always been coded, charged, and asymmetric.

Let’s be honest. Most of the time, those who engage in such acts of exposure are young, attractive, and self-aware. This complicates the gesture. There is power in it, but also seduction — and seduction is never innocent. Sometimes it feels like an aestheticized invitation into vulnerability; other times, it’s a clever way to beat the system at its own game, using visibility to command attention. One can even wonder: where does the sacred stop and the algorithm begin?

This isn’t limited to the art world. The spectacle of violence functions similarly. War photography, for instance, walks the knife’s edge between documentation and voyeurism. There is a noble intent — to reveal suffering, to call for justice — but the image still has to catch the eye. Horror, too, is a hook. Consider the global response to George Floyd’s murder: a video circulated that could not be unseen. It wasn't new in its content, but in its clarity, in the rawness of its form, it became a point of ignition. And it happened during a time — the pandemic — when people were looking for a reason to leave the house. We shouldn't reduce that moment to spectacle alone, but neither can we ignore how much the visual form of the event contributed to its collective emotional charge.

Here the question becomes: are we drawn by empathy or impulse? Do we look because we care, or because we cannot look away? And can the two be untangled?

This is the thought that truly amuses me — the delicate dance between the stated reasons and the unstated impulses. The way we present our concern, while simultaneously responding to something more visceral. The gaze is a complex terrain. And in moments of crisis or spectacle, what emerges is not just solidarity or outrage, but a strange theatre of seeing — one that merges morality with affect, decency with fascination.

From there, I found myself drifting into the concept of utopia. In T.J. Clark’s reading of Poussin, and in Emily LaBarge’s reflections that first sparked these thoughts, there’s the suggestion that utopia emerges not from idealism, but through confrontation with monstrosity — with pain, death, suffering. Affliction, Clark writes, is always the true face of utopia. Not because pain is noble, but because the world that denies it is false.

That sentence stayed with me. I’m still uncertain if I agree. I’ve always thought of utopias as mental constructs — projections of an ideal — and usually, they fail. Too rigid, too detached from the body. Too much brain, not enough breath. Still, the idea that a real utopia must pass through affliction is compelling. Perhaps it’s not about perfection, but about rupture — the moment in which the existing world becomes unbearable and some other form begins to glimmer, however faintly.

And then, inevitably, we arrive at the image of Christ on the cross. A man, nude but dignified, publicly displayed at the center of Western iconography — not in glory, but in agony. The suffering body as the axis of a faith. It’s a strangely seductive symbol: lean, serene, exposed. What does it mean that so many generations have knelt before this figure? Is it compassion that draws the gaze? Piety? A maternal instinct? Or perhaps, quietly, something more entangled — something about the balance of vulnerability, desire, and devotion?

Jean-Luc Nancy, in The Nude: The Birth of an Idea, reflects on this differently: “Nudity is not a lack. It is a presentation: a presence offered.” The nude Christ, then, is not simply humiliated — he is revealed, turned into an image that offers presence and provokes projection. Is it any wonder that so many have imagined themselves wedded to such a figure?

In the end, perhaps this is what the hook of the image is about: a charged invitation, a lever between gazes, a quiet entanglement of care, power, submission, seduction — and belief. But what truly amuses me is not just the image itself, but how we justify our looking. What we say, and what we don't. What we admit, and what remains quietly at play beneath the surface.