Owing to Georges Didi-Huberman’s tour and his exhibition Soulèvement (Uprising), curated by Jeu de Paume and presented across the world (Paris, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, México and Montreal), this article examines the French philosopher and art historian’s remarkable book Images malgré tout (Images despite it all) (2003, Éditions de Minuit). In a world that is so overwhelmingly saturated with images and representations, how can we look back on Auschwitz’s images and interpret them? Are they watchable? Or do they demand an unbearable emotional and intellectual labour from the viewer? How do we position ourselves when faced with the imagery of horror? This article offers a combination of Didi-Huberman’s conceptual and ethical lines of thought developed in his essay, some elements of Sigmund Freud’s ideas concerning desire and the scopic drive as well as Jacques Lacan’s comments on the gaze. Between examples of Didi-Huberman and psychoanalysis’ contribution, this article allows for an ethical product, obtained through the compromise of the image’s various elements (ontology, aesthetics, technique) and the unique, subjective gaze falling upon it; an ethic of the despite it all, an ethic of risk, based on the means to pierce through the Real, the terrible Real of concentration camps – of the deadly machine we call Auschwitz.