Cursed Images: A Short History of The Uncanny

What are Cursed Images and How Does One Find Them?

Consensus has come to define a cursed image as any image that can incite the five Ws in a viewer’s curiosity: who, what, when, where and why. When the clarity of information like these key details are lacking from an image, it is inevitable, there are more questions than answers. We take a look at the history of these images, from the early day of surrealism to the present day.

Tumblr & the Online Origin of Cursed Images

The cursed image as a concept originated from a Tumblr blog in 2015. “At the time, I had a voyeuristic hobby of searching the archives of Flickr to look at forgotten flash photography from years in the past,” explained the owner of cursedimages.tumblr.com. When interviewed by Paper Magazine on the condition of anonymity the 19-year-old female photography and film student from the American Northwest explained “some of these forgotten photographs just had an eerie mood about them, like someone had captured a moment from a dream or another life. I was particularly interested in finding photos of dark and empty rooms, mannequins and costumes, all of which became common themes among cursed images.”

The first image ever posted to the blog depicted a man surrounded by crates of red tomatoes in a wood-effect melamine panelled basement, the kind of banal everyday Americana interior afficionados of William Eggleston and Stephen Shore are familiar with. “It’s the perfect cursed image to me because there’s nothing inherently unsettling about any part of it,” said the blogger “It’s a totally mundane moment transformed into something else by the camera and the new context I’ve given it.”

The five Ws are most commonly derived from a found analogue (non-photoshopped) image that has been taken with an old flash camera or phone. The image often has an improvised or amateurish feel, containing odd effects of light, often from a flash, random and puzzling items placed in incongruous places or in unusual ways. Somehow things are not how our brains believe they are supposed to be, and this prevailing sense is our predominant source of unease or disquiet. They lurk in every dark recess of the online world, passed around in group chats, social media and amidst the digital margins. Their sources and participants are unknown and unknowable—circulated oddments of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another—car crash viewing with the visceral cocktail of unease, horror, repulsion and bewilderment.

Whilst this kind of imagery may be a relatively new online phenomenon, drip fed into our lives through the omnipotence of the internet and the joined-at-the-hip reliance we all have on connected devices, the kind of disquiet propagated by cursed images has long been a source of fascination for artists.

A Short History of the Uncanny

First identified by Ernst Jentsch in his 1906 essay On the Psychology of the Uncanny, Sigmund Freud popularised the term a decade later with his 1919 essay The Uncanny. The concept of “the uncanny” can be considered an apt explanation of why we find “cursed images” so…cursed. Described as the psychological experience of something as strangely familiar, or as Jentsch illustrated as an experience of “intellectual uncertainty”, the concept of the uncanny is difficult to describe as it is rooted in deeply personal reactions to visual stimuli. However, Freud’s essay outlines prevailing themes that could elicit the feeling of the uncanny, of which “applies to everything that was intended to remain secret, hidden away, and has come into the open”. Experimenting with, and replicating this revulsion, fear, and discomfort that comes with exposure to the uncanny or cursed images has fascinated visual artists since its coining.

The Uncanny and the Arts

Surrealist artists can be considered some of the first artists to expressly explore the concept of the uncanny in their work. With an aim to reject a rational and literal portrayal of life, the artists focus on dreamlike worlds full of magic, distortion, horror, and the unconventional. Their philosophy, labelled “surrealist” or “beyond reality”, was explicitly expressed by André Breton in his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto which explained the movement as: “pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.” 

Beyond surrealism, the abject art movement of the late 20th century could be considered a great contributor to the creation of “cursed images” and “the uncanny” in artistic practice. Developed by Julie Kristeva in her 1980 book Powers of Horror, abjection can be considered a complex psychological, philosophical, and linguistic concept influenced by bodily functions and aspects of the body that are deemed unclean or inappropriate for public display. Kristeva explained, “refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live”. The exploration of this underbelly of humanness was pioneered by feminist artists in response to the patriarchal view of the female body. Though surrealists and abject artists may create with different goals, philosophies, and mediums; they are united in the creation of portrayals of the uncanny in contemporary art; bringing what is seen in popular culture as cursed images into galleries, museums, and the unconscious for decades.