Reportage is the practice of reporting- events, experiences, locations, happenings- mostly objective. Reportage illustration is the art of recording events by hand, similar to a photographic journalist. Through illustration you see the impact of the environment and situation on the artist- as their drawings not only convey the goings on of the scene, but the emotions and thoughts of the illustrator. The lines they make are determined by their personal experience, conscious or subconscious.
For this project I focused on an area in Swansea that i personally find intriguing yet unsettling. It feels like no mans land- a street leading from one place to another, where people who have been discarded by society usually gather/seek solace. It’s intriguing because this place is directly opposite a church, and is on the immediate outskirts of a bustling shopping centre. There is a barrier that divides this street and shopping central, which has more impact than just visual. Practically it is a divided, psychologically it separates two different lifestyles. It separates the people who stress about shopping, and the people who stress about living day to day.
I first sat in this location, on a wall, writing constantly about what was going on around me. People, conversations, movements, wildlife, objects… everything I could write down in time.
The following are a few segments of my writing:
A halftone street overshadowed by the walls of New Look, littered with the last leaves of autumn. The bustling of shops and shoppers end abruptly as three metal barricades divide the walkway from town centre. The walls of the buildings look dingy and uncared for- a grimy grey. Casual streams of people pass, no one stays for too long. Most women with prams. Nobody looks up- they all keep their heads down or have headphones in. It sounds like white noise- mostly background sound of the city centre, now and again broken by yells from a ground of people crowding around a section of the walkway frequently inhabited by homeless communities.
There is a distinct difference in the architecture of this area- bland industrial buildings making up the shopping district oppose the old gothic architecture of St Mary’s church – sitting in its own grassy domain surrounded by greenery and trees in an otherwise stone cold district.
The man is dressed in many layers with scruffy hair and glasses and a large backpack, which looks like it contains many belongings. A lady in a brown scarf eats a pastry from Jenkins, carrying a New Look bag, gazing into the window display of the New Look shopfront. She is now standing around in-front of the store finishing her pastry with a thoughtful frown on her face, pacing back and forth.
Returning to the same location, I recorded the time and experiences in pen illustrations, reporting the many aspects of the environment- the buildings, cars passing, shop fronts, people moving, architectural patterns… and afterwards adding in pieces of writing I felt matched these images. The wiring and the drawings are from two different times, in the same location- yet still match quite strongly in theme.
Thinking about other methods of visual reportage- I took photographs of St Mary’s church, documenting its location, its aesthetic appearance and architecture. These photographs were then inverted digitally on photoshop and printed onto acetate to be processed in the dark room. This process involved exposing the image through the acetate onto photographic paper- which was then placed in various chemicals to bring out the image, fix the image, and wash away excess chemical. The outcome of these photographs are shown above- with both the original and inverted effects, which I used to demonstrate an idea of positive and negative connotations to a location.
Caitlin Noble 