Research task 3.2/3.3 - Reporting and Documenting

Research task 3.2 - Reporting and Documenting

For this research, I was asked to read some articles regarding how some artists use reportage illustration to visually depict scenes of war and conflict. Having previously read Joe Sacco’s “Palestine” served as an insight into the  potential of this branch of Reportage and Documentary illustration.
Before reading the three articles about the reporting of war by different illustrators, I looked into the works of some artists who made reportage illustration. It was enjoyable to see the variety of styles and common patterns between them. I created a mood board and chose 5 pictures of each illustrator that I found were the most inspirational ones.

After researching through these artists work, I read through the articles about Edward Ardizzone, Olivier Kugler and three-way collaboration between the late French photographer Didier Lefèvre, graphic novelist Emmanuel Guibert and graphic designer Frédéric Lemercier“The Photographer” with the objective of making an analysis of how they illustrate the war, their choices of composition, colour and line work, delving more into the technicalities and process.
These three articles deal with three distinct formats on how to make reportage illustration.

Before I started to think what to write, I had a bit of confusion into what the definitions of reporting and documenting were.  Reporting in journalistic terms is  “ a piece of information that is unsupported by firm evidence.” ,  whereas Documenting means “ Something, such as a recording or a photograph, that can be used to furnish evidence or information.”. 
Transferring those terms to illustration, in reporting war, the artist as an observer, depicts the environment through his own lenses, he adds his  emotional opinion to what he sees and draws.
Whereas documenting, these observations are supported with further evidence, as if detaching from emotions and focusing on what actually happens, he could add words or testimonies to the picture. 

These two definitions can be assigned exclusively to each artist, Edward Ardizzone has a role of reporting the scenes of war, being on World war 2 sites drawing what he was experiencing and adding his emotional tone in the way he drew. His drawings give the sensation of having a bit of dark humour to a commonly serious topic. 

Olivier Kugler on the other hand, experienced and illustrated the scenes of war differently, he’s a more contemporary artist, he focused on the refugee crisis, adds a more serious tone to his illustrations by adding details about the people or families who were in writing, not only he drew them in more details but also he interviewed them and added the transcripts into his drawings.



 Below I will analyse two pictures of each artist’s work.

Edward Ardizzone

We are arrested by Ferocious Home Guards. by E. Ardizzone. Imperial War Museum. 

Children Playing on a Captured Enemy Tank in Forlì, 1945. Ink and wash on paper. Imperial War Museum

In the first picture, It appears to be  Ardizzone uses a desaturated blue, yellow and green and adds ink wash to make the shadows in the characters. The way he places the shadows in the home guards and prisoners seems to be deliberate, to help isolate the characters from the surrounding environment. Furthermore, we don’t see much detail and expression on the faces of the inspecting guards and the surrendering prisoners we get to see their fear expression.
In his mark making, we can see that it was a quick drawing , he didn’t delve much into detailing his subject, focusing more on the gesture of the characters and giving clarity into what was happening in front of him. I liked the way that his characters turned out, they have a cartoony appearance in how round they look, there isn’t much straight, aggressive lines, they are gentle instead, which contributes to lighten to emotional tone of the picture.

In the second picture, the colours are  predominantly a desaturated yellow, red and blue. He uses ink for the line work and the wash for the shadows. To help Focus the eye on the children playing on the captured enemy tank, he seems to thicken and darken the lines around the whole family and parts of the tank, as well as the dog, maybe to establish them in the foreground, the building behind the tank is slightly with less darker lines but enough to emphasise it, maybe to help establish the location. In this picture he also shows his typical gentle line which contributes to give a lighter emotional tone to the picture as well as the dog urinating on the tank.



The way his marks are made, we can see that he drew on location as the events were unfolding. As a consequence, he had to draw quickly, like a sketch in the sense that he didn’t go into detailing with precision every element within the picture, just enough to tell the story.

His format is made with just drawings.

Olivier Kugler

My analysis was based on his work on “Escaping Wars and Waves”, which he interviews refugees from Syria in the island of Kos, in Greece. His approach to reportage illustration is like a documentary, where he seeks to distance his emotions from the illustration, 

similar to a journalist, he interviews the refugees and adds transcripts of their 

interviews in a speech bubble, in the same way as in a comic book, to his drawings. 

I will try to dissect his illustrations in its technical aspects.

 © . Image used under educational fair use policy.

 © . Image used under educational fair use policy.

His process is similar in both these drawings. Based on his interview from the article, his illustrations are initially made with a regular  pencil, where he sketches some parts on location whilst interviewing, and to avoid hassling the refugees to stay in pose, he takes photographs of them as a reference for adding more details with less time constraints in the comfort of his studio.
 He then scans his pencil drawing, and digitally paints the characters as well as adding the words.


In all of his illustrations in this book, he details the interviewees in depth,  with the folds, their hand gestures, body language, facial expressions, their gadgets, etc. On the background he adds elements from the surrounding environment where the interview took place, like architectural and natural features in the form of quick sketches, just to add a sense of place and help the reader gain a greater awareness. These details are complemented with the use of words, in the form of dialogue and descriptive text.
Often he only colours the subject leaving the surroundings with just line work. This helps to draw the attention towards what’s important.
On the main subject, he also draws in them their different hand gestures made during the time of the interview, in the form of line work with no colour, this again helps to inform the reader the emotional state the refugee when the interview took place.

Olivier draws different poses of the hand within  the single character to help describe his body language at the time of the interview.

Olivier‘s format is of combining drawings with words .

Finally, we will look at another format of reportage illustration, whereby photographs, drawings and words are combined.

 © . Image used under educational fair use policy.

 © . Image used under educational fair use policy.

In this type of illustration,photojournalist  Didier Lefèvre photographed and wrote about the Russia Afghan war, he was on the location where he photographed the daily lives of Afghan mountain dwellers during the conflict and risked his life during the process, he later collaborated with Illustrator Emmanuel Guibert, and they decided to make a graphic novel.

The process to accomplish this novel started with the writer and photographer, who experienced in first hand the events, documenting and reporting in the form of a written diary the stories of the dwellers accompanied of photographs. Later he collaborated with a graphic novelist who, based on the stories and photographic references, made the illustrations with dialogue and narrative bubble in graphic novel format.

The final process consists of assembling the drawings, writings and photograph in order to build a narrative in the form of comic book, the graphic designer then formats the words and pictures within the pages in order to tell the story as effectively as possible.

This format brings a slightly more realistic tone for the depiction of the event by adding photographs, but unlike plain photography, it adds the emotional response of the observer to the events by combining it with words and drawings.

Conclusion:

Looking at this variety of artists showed different ways one can use to achieve, to report and document what one observes and translate it into paper. 

We later looked at a more extreme version of reporting and documenting ,specifically in a war situation.

Looking at the three articles, shows how a pathos is achieved by different artists in different ways.

Different formats provoke different emotional responses in the viewer. 

Research Task 3.3 - Reporting and Documenting

Key points:

• Choose a piece of reportage or documentary from one of the reportage illustrators in the list provided in the OCA sketchbooks manual or from the website reportager: www.reportager.org,
• Compare the image to a photograph of a similar subject matter
• The image doesn´t need to be the same location, event or activity, or even chronologically in the same era.

The piece of reportage I chose was one of Lucinda Rogers of a Deli in New York.

Image by Lucinda Rogers/ 55st Deli ,https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1713657856/new-york-drawings

Image by Will Femia/ 55 st. Deli ,http://testofwill.blogspot.com/2007/10/55-st-deli.html

After choosing the piece of reportage and a photograph with the same subject, I was asked to answer the following questions.

•  What is each image expressing, describing or communicating?

In the illustration, besides the fact that is highlighting the name of the Deli, the artist is communicating to the observer with the red/brown colour  the decay, dullness and  tradition of the area contrasted with the white sky and the banner of the Deli, I believe that it means that the only sources of joy in that area are the areas highlighted in white. Lucinda Rogers adds her emotional mark in the illustration  in the way she uses colour and contrast.

The photograph seems to have an informative role, similar to what you would find in a postcard or an advert.

• Which image do you think is most memorable?

The top image, it looks more striking in the way the contrast of white and brown/red are used.

• Does one image seem more truthful and why?

Whilst the photograph shows what the eye can literally see,  the illustration has the same elements that of the photograph (what basic linework of the buildings) but adds what feeling it can evoke by being on that place. Deli´s like that one can be found everywhere in New York, hence the reason the adds the brown/red colour, to portray that dullness, that after a while it all becomes repetitive.

• Which image would you be more likely to notice if it was in a magazine or newspaper and why?

Definitely the illustration, if I was flipping through a magazine, I believe I would stop longer on that page to get a better look at the picture and look through the line work details and the cinematographic contrast of white and brown. Whereas the photograph, my instinct would be to pass through that page since it would looked like another advert or another photo out of many, and that wouldn´t have the same visual impact in comparison with the Reportage.