For those who don't know, a cursed image refers to picture - usually a photograph - that in someway unsettles the viewer. The term originates from a Tumblr blog established by an anonymous female film student in 2015 and rapidly spread across all forms of social media.
But what, I hear you ask, actually constitutes such a picture?
Well, an image might be described as cursed due to its content, some technical aspect, or the context in which it was taken or is viewed. Or it might simply possess a mysterious quality that is not quite possible to pin-point, but which nevertheless gives people the willies.
As one commentator rightly says, if a picture needs a caption underneath to
explain why it's cursed, then it isn't cursed.
Uncanny ambiguity and a
kind of abject (and amateurish) surrealism are key and the very best images oblige the viewer not only to wonder what it is they're looking at or try to figure out the intention of the photographer in taking such a shot, but question the nature of everyday reality and their own place within it.
Thus, cursed images have an existential import, as mundane objects - such as a crate of tomatoes - suddenly appear uncanny, even evil. And yet, as Matt Moen notes:
"In a chaotic world that seems to defy logic more and more with each passing day, the cursed image offers us a perverse sense of comfort by reaffirming the fact that it's not just us who seem to be going crazy." [1]
Notes
[1] Matt Moen, 'Cursed Images: Finding Comfort in Discomfort', on papermag.com (09 Dec 2019): click here.
In the same piece, Moen also makes the important point that the cursed image presents a direct challenge to the carefully photoshopped or deepfake picture by "positing a reality that is far
stranger than anything we could fabricate".
A follow up post to this one on derealisation suggests my photos are more the product of mental dysfunction than the desire to follow social media trends, or subscribe to a creepy aesthetic: click here.
