WHY

This website is part of an ongoing project that researches how sexual violence is visualized—specifically the stock photos and illustrations used in articles on the subject in national and regional newspapers, primarily in the Netherlands and Sweden. These images tend to fall into a limited set of recurring visual themes:

Individually, these images might not be harmful. But when they become the only visuals that accompany stories about sexual violence, they begin to shape a narrow and problematic narrative.

WHY IS THAT A PROBLEM?

Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie coined the term the danger of a single story. She describes how exposure to only one perspective—whether in books, media, or images—can distort our understanding and limit our empathy. As a child in Nigeria, Adichie only read stories about white children drinking ginger beer and talking about the weather. She assumed that was what books were supposed to be about. That’s the power of repetition—it defines what we think is normal, expected, or true.

When it comes to sexual violence, mainstream media typically tells a single story too. And it’s often from the perspective of the perpetrator.

In the images, the victim is nearly always shown—usually in a defensive pose—while the perpetrator is either absent or reduced to a shadowy hand. In some cases, the viewer is even placed in the perspective of the perpetrator. These depictions also subtly suggest that the victim had some agency to stop it: the raised hand, the act of resistance. But in reality, many survivors are frozen, shocked, or powerless to act.

This narrow portrayal contributes to the myth of the "ideal victim"—someone who fights back, someone who fits a certain profile. It reinforces stereotypes that sexual assault only looks one way: the stranger in the bushes, the dramatic attack. But in reality, sexual assault is often far more ordinary and insidious:

And yes, sometimes it is the man in the bushes. It’s not one thing.

To truly support survivors, we need to recognize and represent the full complexity of these experiences.

MAKING THE COMPLEXITY VISIBLE

I, Jonna Bo Lammers, believe that this narrative must change. The current visual language surrounding sexual violence is reductive and harmful.I believe illustration can offer something different. It has the power to depict not just actions, but emotions, internal states, and complexity—things traditional media images fail to capture.

With this website, I aim to challenge the dominant imagery and offer a counter-visual story. One that does not flatten survivors’ experiences into clichés. One that offers empathy, nuance, and recognition. This is just the beginning—a visual pushback against the harm done by a single story!

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HOW DID THIS PROJECT START

I started this project because of something that happened to me on the metro in Stockholm. I was sitting in a four-seater, and a man across from me was intensely watching me. I was finishing up my Swedish homework, so I shoved my face back into my books. But every time I looked up, he was still staring. The last time I glanced up, I saw he was still fixated on me—and masturbating. A wave of adrenaline hit, and I immediately went into flight mode. I stood up, nearly dropped my books, and ran to the other end of the train. I vaguely looked back, hoping someone would intervene or say something—but I don’t think anything happened. I got off a stop early and ran to my Swedish class. I tried to talk to a friend from class about it, but our teacher interrupted and started the lesson. I pushed the whole thing to the back of my mind and tried to concentrate. I remember not being able to take the metro home afterward.

The next morning, I still couldn’t enter the metro. I felt the ghost of him sitting there. And yet, despite all the signs of trauma, I couldn’t acknowledge what had happened as sexual assault. I’ve experienced sexual assault before—I know how to recognize it, how to deal with it. So why didn’t I see this for what it was? After some time and good conversations, I realized: because he didn’t touch me, I thought it didn’t “count.” It didn’t feel “real.” Where did that idea come from?

Around the same time, I was working on an illustration for a crowdfunding campaign for a documentary about the aftermath of sexual assault. As always, I researched how this topic has been visualised before—I like to understand the visual language that already exists. I looked at countless images accompanying articles about sexual assault in Dutch and Swedish media. Headlines like: “Study: 1 in 3 women has experienced sexual assault” or “Man assaults woman on the streets in Älvsjö.” And I started to notice patterns.

First: touch. It was everywhere. That explained my own response—I had internalized the idea that assault = physical touch. Second: the victim was almost always portrayed as a white woman, and the perpetrator as a white man.

Then, more subtle patterns emerged. The survivor is almost always shown—but not the assaulter. In many cases, the viewer is even placed in the point-of-view of the assaulter. Sometimes subtly, sometimes disturbingly explicitly. POV: you are assaulting someone. And there’s such an overwhelming emphasis on the act of saying no. This is deeply problematic. It implies that if you didn’t say no—maybe it wasn’t really assault. As if consent is only valid when verbally and forcefully stated. Sexual assault is already a topic riddled with guilt; these images only deepen that burden for survivors. More and more, I saw the same motifs repeated: the hand, the stop gesture, the shadowy threat.

The thing is, these images aren’t inherently bad. But their repetition creates a single narrative. One truth. And I’m missing so much colour—both figuratively and literally.