Visual storytelling

Remember those days when children would bury their faces into graphic novels and comic books instead of shaking joysticks in front of desktops? Storytelling through visuals has been an art over the ages and methods of telling a story has evolved from the initial cave paintings to some of the recent forms including graffiti, movies and photographs. 

An exhibition titled ‘Telling Stories Through Pictures’ is being held at the India Habitat Centre by Girija Jhunjhunwala, Director, Campfire Graphic Novels throughout the month of July from 10am to 6pm. It showcases the popular medium of graphic novels and explores how they can be a useful tool for both entertainment and education.

 Accompanied by a selection of spectacular art panels, the exhibition takes the viewer through the various aspects of a graphic novel, its evolution, its visual impact and scope. The exhibition tries to explain how a graphic novel can make complex ideas and concepts less daunting through the help of a thoughtful combination of text and images, and contains a step-by-step guide on how a page in a graphic novel is put together.

A graphic novel is essentially a form of sequential art. It is a narrative told through a sequence of images accompanied by dialogues and descriptive captions. The combination of visuals and text create endless possibilities of telling and re-telling stories across genres.

 As such, they are not a new medium. Medieval art, Egyptian art, and even cave paintings have used sequences of images to tell a story. While they are generally published in the form of books, reading a graphic novel is an immersive experience similar to that of watching a film. 

Graphic novels and comic books are essentially the same medium and have the same roots, differing only in tone and content. In contrast to the lightweight, action-oriented content of comic books, a graphic novel offers greater scope for handling mature themes and issues intellectually. 

In the last few decades, several graphic novels have made the genre popular and have given it the attention that it deserves. Graphic novels are now recognized as a medium for serious storytelling.

Teachers and educators have also realised the important role that graphic novels can play in education. Young readers often find bland text boring to read. The sequential image-text combination makes graphic novels a good tool that can supplement text books, as they make the subject easier to understand. 

In this manner, graphic novels can be used as a fun and entertaining ‘infotainment’ medium to teach various subjects. Graphic novels have even been used to teach complex subjects like Physics and Calculus.

With an award-winning catalogue of almost 90 titles, Campfire has been publishing books across the categories of classics, biographies, mythology, History and originals for the last eight years. Campfire had won the best graphic novel of the year at ComicCon India for four years in a row.

Some of its most popular titles are Gandhi: My Life is My Message, Steve Jobs: Genius by Design, World War Two: Against the Rising Sun, Draupadi: The Fire-Born Princess, The Jungle Book, and many more. Their aim is to entertain and educate people by creating unique illustrated books which recount stories of human values and arouse curiosity and inspire with tales of great deeds and unforgettable people.