Aspects of visual discursivity in graphic journalism: narrative enunciation and visual witness in Le Photographe

Abstract

The article examines some of the features designating comics as samples of a sub-genre labelled as “graphic journalism”: characterized by bringing together visual and discursive resources of graphic narratives, and exploitation of topic universes associated with historical and social actualities, such materials raise discussions about several defining criteria for journalistic practices, as recognized in its basic elements, resources, institutions and devices. I am interested in observing the characteristics of a partícular work in this context, the album Le Photographe (GUIBERT, LEFÈVRE and LEMERCIER, 2009), with special focus on the enunciative and narrative regimes of visual forms used in this graphic narrative. Preference is here given to methodological approaches discriminating the dialectics between specificity/integration of different media (drawing, photography and graphic composition), constituting a testimonial discursivity of contemporary visual narratives: I concentrate on the narrative schemes of representation of actions and the game-like structure that marks the different discursive positions of narrative enunciation, through the oscillation between drawing and photographic formats.