REPORT / RETOUR

On Portraiture in Graphic Journalism

What has been practiced for many decades and what is known today as “graphic reporting” or “reportage drawing” is mostly a one-sided endeavor. Based on local research, these reporting artists produce hand-drawn illustrations that, through a process of sometimes self-organized media dissemination, aim to offer a distinctly subjective, “humanized” response to highly technical reporting in print and digital media. This method of reporting, often described as “alternative,” is one-sided because it frequently collects images and commentary from regions far removed from the “West”—based on narrative-driven facts from a more or less recognizable colonialist perspective—and “reports” them back to the countries of origin of economic “exploitation,” carrying them back and utilizing them.

In my talk, I am interested in those practices—from the vast array of artistic examples—that are conscious of this historical context. Among my examples, I will present reportages by Joe Sacco, Susan Turcot, George Butler, Victoria Lomasko, Sarah Glidden, and Molly Crabapple, among others. In doing so, I will focus on a specific feature of their work: they all make use of interview techniques in their artistic practice. The focus is on the artistic reconstruction of the investigative portrait, in which the artists detach themselves from the situation—which could potentially be perceived as uncomfortable or “interrogative”— and conduct their exploratory conversations within a limited framework, creating neutral or appreciative portraits of the interviewees—and in many cases, presenting these portraits to the subjects as a “return” of the reportage. In the latter cases, they themselves take only a photograph of the portrait. Other parts of the illustrated reporting are not affected by this. I would like to discuss this aspect against the backdrop of the role of drawing in the historical ethnographic context.

Clemens Krümmel, born in 1964, lives and works in Berlin and Zurich. He is an art historian, independent curator, author, and translator. He was co-editor and editor of the Berlin-based journal Texte zur Kunst (2000–2006), co-founder of the Melton Prior Institute for Reportage Drawing in Düsseldorf (with Alexander Roob), and is co-editor of the book series “Polypen,” published by b_books Verlag in Berlin (with Sabeth Buchmann, Helmut Draxler, and Susanne Leeb).