Contemporary Reportage Drawing

Ecstatic moments and hybridity

Abstract

The field of contemporary reportage practice is diverse and divergent. No longer is reportage drawing restricted to the commissioning structures of print media and accompanying expectations of journalistic doctrine. In contemporary reportage drawing, practitioners are seeking subjects and circumstances that are both personally significant and provide some opportunity to exploit the political and social dimensions of their subject. The authorial shift in reportage drawing is not a refutation of its journalistic origins and rather takes those ideals and applies them inward. This contemporary moment for reportage drawing has come to be most vividly about drawing itself. This paper seeks to explore past and contemporary reportage artists and my own work as an example of how the practice has come to highlight the qualities of drawing and experience and, how self-initiated work has meant an evolution of the relationship between text, image and journalism.