Robert Weaver / Tomi Ungerer. Illustration in action

This new exhibition explores visual journalism, or illustrated reportage, based on direct observation of reality. Heir to the travel diaries of the eighteenth century, this practice gained momentum after 1945 in newspaper magazines, and enjoyed a new boom in the United States in the 1960s. It blends the artistic eye with journalistic reporting, aiming to capture an atmosphere, a context, a sensitive truth. Robert Weaver, one of Tomi Ungerer's mentors, was one of its pioneers: influenced by urban life and social tensions, he used drawing as an investigative and narrative tool, anchored in contemporary reality. At the same time, Tomi Ungerer was also covering soccer, baseball and derby games for Sports Illustrated, sketching American society at its most popular pastimes. Finally, the genre of illustrated reportage also includes courtroom drawings, made in courts where cameras are sometimes forbidden: as witness Olivier Dangla's drawings, which transcribe the trial of the January 2015 attacks.