Footnotes In Gaza by Joe Sacco

 

Joe Sacco’s graphic journalism manages to convey very, very complex situations with surprising ease. It isn’t simply the form, but the sheer legwork that Sacco puts in for research. If you haven’t read Sacco before, his style is to draw himself investigating stories in hard places, as in the Bosnian War in ‘Safe Area Goradze’, and in his book ‘Palestine'. He’s back in Palestine for Footnotes in Gaza, where his journalism and art have reached a high peak – there isn’t a frame that isn’t compelling, and though the issues he confronts are, of course, complex, there isn’t a word wasted or a sentence that drags either. The title refers to the way that the issue Sacco wants to examine has been ignored. ‘History can do without its footnotes’ he says, ‘Footnotes are inessential at best; at worst they trip up the greater narrative’. But he disagrees with this line, and sets out to get information about an incident in 1956, where 111 Palestinian refugees were killed. The trouble is, no one is interested in 1956, ‘Here, where the ink never dries’. But Sacco is persistent and a story does emerge, but to his credit no easy answers are offered. [Keir Hind]