“There is no torrent of images,” according to Jacques Rancière. In his essay for the catalogue to “La politique des images,” the recent retrospective devoted to Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, the philosopher writes that the oft-stated idea that there is an excess of images—seducing and anesthetizing us—is a cliché generated by the very machinery of power that lies behind these images. The media don’t show us too many images of the ugliness of our world, Rancière argues, but rather too few. Since the late ’70s, Jaar has used his sharp eye and great sensitivity to cast light on the