Journalist and cartoonist Joe Sacco gave a talk at Dartmouth last night, as part of a visit for the Center for Cartoon Studies across the state line in White River Junction. It was worth going to, and worth breaking with our usual format to report on. In his books, Sacco provides stark but human portraits and reports of what is happening at ground level in some of the darker corners of the world.
He is comfortable, he says, describing his work with the term "comic book," because, while he acknowledges that the word "comic" has some implication of humor, it's not a necessary component, and, he says, "graphic novel" just seems like a marketing term. Whatever you call the things he writes, they are set in such places as Gaza and Bosnia, places that are under seige, and among people who are under seige.
"My interest," he said, "is in the people who are dispossessed, who are swept under the rug of history."
Sacco explained that, as a freelancer with no large organization sponsoring him, he had no access to the generals and politicians anyway, and so ended up among the common people, telling their stories, and that, when he reached the point where he started to rise to a position where he might have that access to power, it no longer appealed to him.
I kind of suspect it never really did, or, at least, that he would have a much less heralded and much less satisfying career if he had given in to the chance to sit across the big desk and ask questions.
Sacco began his talk with two images not his own; starting with this iconic photo from the Vietnam War:
He noted that, while the photo galvanized the American public's growing opposition to the war, it was not taken for that reason, and photographer Eddie Adams has since said he regrets the picture. He has, Sacco reported, called the general a hero and suggested that the photo didn't tell the true story, in which, on a very hot, stressful day, the general came face-to-face with someone who had just killed four Americans. "What would you do?" Adams now asks people.
Sacco compared that photo, in which the photographer happened to snap the shutter at the precise moment to capture an enduring image, with Goya's Third of May, which is also journalism, but is more artificially created, giving Goya the opportunity to choose how to set up his illustration of what happened.
In Goya's painting, the French executioners are faceless and identical, while the Spanish include the dead, the dying and those who are being marched to their fate. By intertwining the three stages, Goya creates a more complete picture of the event, and one that is not intended to be "objective."
Sacco makes no pretense of being objective or omniscient, and said that coming from a time and place where his first comics were autobiographical -- "stories about my love life" -- it was natural that he would draw himself as a character in the comics that detailed his travels to various hot spots around the world. As a "subjective journalist," his reactions to what he sees and hears are part of the story and, by including himself as a figure within the narrative, he acknowledges that you are getting his take on things.
"First-person narration has value. It lets people know, by that choice of perspective, that they are getting a piece of subjective journalism."
But that does not preclude honesty, he insisted. His sympathies are, for example, with the Palestinians, he readily concedes. But that doesn't mean that Palestinians don't do things with which he disgrees and that make him angry, and it doesn't mean that he won't report on those things.
The first-person narration also allows him to include revealing anecdotes, he added. "Journalists often have experiences that they have to cut out of their reports," he said. For instance, when he was traveling back and forth between Sarajevo and Gorazde during the Bosnian War, people would give him packages and letters for soldiers or family members, and he was able to write about these sometimes touching and often revealing errands, "and not have to say 'a soldier gave a letter to a reporter,'" he said. "That just feels false."
"It also allows you to explore your own prejudices, because you do bring them with you," he added.
With an audience that included many aspiring cartoonists, he went into some detail about his visual reporting. One advantage of the comic form, he said, comes in the visceral nature of the depiction. He showed an illustration from one of his books and noted that a reporter using only words couldn't keep noting that it was muddy without sounding repetitive and silly. But there was mud in each of his panels, which drove home its constant presence.
He also explained that he had gone to the local historians for shots of a particular housing complex in Gaza as it was in the 1950s and used that for an illustration, then drew the same scene as it is today from his own observations, to show how it had become built up in a literal sense because the area is hard up against the borders and there is no space to build outward.
Both are accurate depictions, though one comes from archival photos and the other from direct observation. He also showed various illustrations in which he had used more "comic" images in order to convey a more chaotic or surreal situation.
In illustrating stories of the past, told to him by the people he met, Sacco explained that he worked hard to get the historic details of soldiers' uniforms, of the types of trains, correct, but didn't agonize over an exact depiction of a specific scene exactly as it happened. "This is more of an essential truth than a literal truth," he said. And yet it is truth.
As he traveled and spoke with people, he wrote pages of notes, he sketched maps, he took photographs, so that he could go back two or three years later, when he had reached that part of the book, and get the pictures right.
I've been aware of the cartoonist-as-reporter, but Sacco actually has a journalism degree and operates from a conscious perspective that made a great deal of sense to me. For example, someone asked how he could see some of the things he saw and respond to it as both a person and a journalist, and I was reminded of my own experiences as a reporter in difficult situations.
"I'm kind of cold," he admitted, but said it sometimes strikes him later on, when he's doing the illustration. And I agree. The detachment is real, and you can't be weeping over the things you are supposed to be observing. Nor is it a case of disciplining yourself - it's one of those things that either you have or you don't, and, if you don't have that natural detachment, you probably can't do the job.
I was impressed with the consciousness he brings to his craft, not in the sense that he lines up with the people I would have him line up with (though he does), but in the sense that he does not operate on instinct but with thought about what he does.
That's how journalism works, whatever form or medium it assumes.
His major works are (cribbed, but with Amazon links added, from the Wikipedia article on him):
- 2000: Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995. Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1-56097-470-2
- 2001: Palestine . Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1-56097-432-X
- 2003: The Fixer: A Story of Sarajevo. Drawn and Quarterly Books. ISBN 1-896597-60-2
- 2003: Notes from a Defeatist. Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1-56097-510-5
- 2005: War's End: Profiles from Bosnia 1995-96. Drawn and Quarterly. ISBN 1-896597-92-0
- 2006: But I Like It. Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1-56097-729-9
- 2009: Footnotes in Gaza. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 0805073477.
I first became aware of Sacco's work via Brian Fies -- accidentally.
The three volumes of his that I have so far are among the most powerful things I've read in a while. Thanks for this background, Mike.
Posted by: Sherwood | 02/25/2011 at 12:32 PM
I keep forgetting that HTML tags don't take in comments here. The following URL was supposed to be hitched to "accidentally" in my above comment: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=472477533654&set=a.120863238654.98512.117490758654&theater
Posted by: Sherwood | 02/25/2011 at 12:35 PM