Reportage Drawing

This book offers a critical analysis of contemporary reportage drawing, how it functions and how it contributes to a deeper understanding of the world.

How does drawing shape the truth and our understanding of the visual world? Why has the act of reportage drawing persisted and thrived in our ever-changing media landscape? This book offers a deep dive into the world of reportage drawing, a world which is provocative, mixed media, transdisciplinary and immersed in the idiosyncratic vision of the artist. Where the traditional orientation of reportage was on the communicative function of the image as a record of an event, contemporary practitioners, largely detached from commissioning structures of the 19th and 20th centuries, now seek to capture more experiential qualities of place and choose locations which have highly personal and political significance. Liberated from old conceptions of reportage drawing as objective and true, artists today embrace subjectivity and are seeking a rich dialogue with their subjects, using drawing to tell important stories about protest, human migration, war, corporate capitalism and homelessness. Louis Netter distinguishes contemporary reportage drawing from its historical function through a critical exploration of the aesthetic of the sketch, the role of caricature and the nature of experience. Featuring several prominent artists such as Jill Gibbon, who secretly draws in arms fairs across Europe, Phoebe Glockner, who produces highly provocative mixed media work about violence against women in Mexico, renowned reportage illustrator Gary Embury and French reportage artist Loup Blaster, in addition to an exploration of the author’s own work, this book shows how the act of drawing can foster new insights about people, places and political realities in often subtle and challenging ways. Part of the Drawing In series, this book opens up reportage drawing practice as a way of understanding our world in a deeper and more personal way.