La BD reportage: origines et esthétiques

This course will trace the rise of “comics journalism,” a term first coined and popularized by the Maltese-American artist Joe Sacco in the 1990s. Surpassing the political or editorial cartoon in space and scope, BD reportage is often aligned with subjective or opinion journalism, or “op-art.” It is rooted in long-form reporting, oral interviews, and embedded research—all communicated via the full arsenal of tools available in the comics medium (e.g., sequences, hand-drawn text and art, gutters, word bubbles, etc.). Like investigative journalism more broadly, graphic reporting covers the breadth of topics that affect modern life: from on-going wars and conflicts, to mass migration and the immigrant experience, to environmental disasters, trial reporting, the prison industrial-complex, and so on.

Often approached as a predominately American phenomenon, practiced by first and foremost by Sacco himself, it is an increasingly dominant subgenre of French-language comics, as can be seen in the runaway success of Le photographe (published between 2003 and 2006)—artist Emmanuel Guibert’s stunning, multi-album collaboration with the late photojournalist Didier Lefèvre, about the latter’s 1986 humanitarian mission through Pakistan and Soviet-occupied Afghanistan during the Afghan War (1979-1989)—and in a proliferation of French-language terms and formal prizes granted by major French media organizations (France Culture, France Info). While glancing at a prehistory of proto-forms (like illustrated news in the UK and the US or “printed literature” in Europe), this class will reconstitute a narrower French-language lineage of graphic reporting, through early children’s supplements, wartime comics propaganda, and postwar and present-day illustrated magazines.This course will also juxtapose the work of active artist-reporters, with non-journalist illustrators whose practice is somehow reporting-adjacent.

This course will take the form of a seminar, which will take place in French. The professor will open each session with a “mini-lecture” that frames the day’s content and sets the tone for student discussion. Reading materials include several documentary graphic albums.

Keywords: comics, graphic novels, journalism, current events