Reportager Journal

During my voyages on the interweb I have discovered a very interesting journal - print and online - called Reportager, all about reportage illustration. It is a project in association with the UWE Bristol and also the Topolski Studio in London. I did some work experience at the Topolski Century (as was) back in summer 2012. Since then they have changed in organisation somewhat and are now running a residency for young artists focusing on reportage drawing.

The Reportager website is excellent and they also have an excellent blog, on which there is much more of interest, including - shock horror - a visit to a race meeting (Windsor) by some of the residents at the Topolski studio!

In their own words:

Reportager exists in order to support, initiate, and showcase projects involving drawing as reportage, visual journalism, documentary drawing and illustration as visual essay. We are interested in projects, which use the made image to interrogate a diverse range of themes. The website works as an editorial space for the dissemination of good practice in this area. 

There are good examples of image-makers acting as visual journalists, proactively making work that interests them, documenting either impartially or subjectively on a wide range of issues and locations. We aim to present the very best and innovative examples of visual reportage from around the world and will continue to add new material as it becomes available

I am familiar with the work of Felix Topolski and he has been one of my chief sources of inspiration. Many of the other artists featured on the website are new to me however and have some very interesting approaches to drawn reportage including one digital interactive piece about a court hearing by the Berlin based illustrator Bo Soremsky. Rather like a 'point and click' adventure game, by clicking the mouse over highlighted parts of the drawing the story is told almost as if moving through a virtual courtroom. My German is so rusty that I will not try to translate but it is worth a look for the technique alone (to say nothing for the drawing) as I have never seen anything like this before:

© Bo Soremsky

Both the journal, blog and the Topolski Studio I will do some more research into in the near future as part of this project and perhaps get in touch with some or all of them to see if they would be interested in my work. The interactive technique is also worth further research - although perhaps as part of the Research Experiment rather than FMP as it is an entirely new - and possibly complicated - technique.