Visual notes

by Alex Bodea

Drawshooting: visual notes en route is an investigative, comprehensive project that shows how drawing journalism could be reconsidered in contemporary context. How and what it can do in a way that is impossible for photo/video to do. For this, a new perspective is being developed: the use of drawing in such a way that it can describe, analyze, comment on its subject without restricting to mimetically render its physical shape, as done so far in visuals of journalism. A drawing the catches what it cannot be photographed. A drawing that goes beyond visible. That sees right in the middle of a concept. In this regard, visual notes are ideal captions, snapshots of reality simplified to their very essence. Imagine them as x-rays of photographic images: nothing is left but the clearest inner structure- now you can understand how things work. Thus, complex compositions are sharply reinvented throughout a 1+1=2 basic process. And the idea behind appears in full light.
The project started in October 2012 and has gathered so far around 400 visual notes taken in the urban context of (mostly) Berlin, especially the railway transportation system (U-Bahn and S-Bahn). Each visual note is recorded with the exact time and place of its realization. A constantly uploaded online archive is being administrated, as well as a physical archive. In the course of the next year, a selection of visual notes is intended to be published.
Visual notes online: http://drawshootingenroute.wordpress.com