In old paintings, women are often posed to be looked at while men do the looking — the image assumes a viewer with power. The 'gaze' studies how looking itself is arranged by power, in art, ads, and film alike.
We never look innocently
Visual culture treats images not as neutral windows but as sites where meaning and power are produced. John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing' argued that how we see is shaped by convention and ideology. The concept of 'the gaze' — developed by Laura Mulvey for cinema — analyzes how images position a viewer and construct their object.
Mulvey argued classical cinema framed women as objects of a 'male gaze.' The point generalizes: images encode a viewing position that carries assumptions about power and identity.
Berger noted that in the European nude tradition, the woman is painted aware of being watched — composed for a spectator assumed to be male.
- Take an advertisement image.
- Ask whom it assumes is looking and how it flatters or positions them.
- State one assumption about power or identity the image encodes.
What you should see: The ad constructs an ideal viewer and addresses them; identifying that position exposes the assumptions — about desire, gender, or status — built into the image.