The new visual journalism

Embury, Gary

Abstract

Opportunities for illustrators have vastly increased over the last few years partly due to new technologies and the growth and easy availability of visual material.
There is a theory we are approaching an era of
new visual literacy, (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996 p.16 &19) brought about by the change of balance between image and text. Every week we open the colour supplements to see yet another several page photographic visual essay or photo illustrated report on ecological, geopolitical, or social issue from our inner cities. Much current illustration, of which there are very good examples, exist either as ambient decoration, or page ller, and only really engages
us on a purely aesthetic level. Much contemporary illustration doesn’t really comment, debate or inform, but merely exists on a secondary level to support the text.
There are examples where illustrators are acting as visual journalists, proactively, authorially making
work about issues and subjects, which interest them. Illustrators are being commissioned as reporters to go out and document on a range of subjects, locations and issues.
www.reportager.org is a new online journal which supports, initiates, and showcases projects involving drawing as reportage. Reportager is interested in projects, which use the made image to interrogate a diverse range of themes and is interested in projects which are issue based, including those which use new and emerging technologies.
This paper/presentation aims to demonstrate documentary drawing and reportage is alive and kicking and increasingly relevant in the 21st Century.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Boundaries: Making and breaking illustration’s frontiers
• Start Date: Sep 14, 2012
• End Date: Sep 15, 2012
• Acceptance Date: Sep 14, 2012
• Publication Date: Sep 15, 2012
• Deposit Date: Sep 6, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 9, 2019
• Volume: 1
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/2812355
• Publisher URL: https://theaoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/VaroomLab_Journal_IssueOne.pdf