Sascha Hommer

Sascha Hommer  © © Nicole Sturz  Sascha Hommer © Nicole Sturz
Sascha Hommer was born in 1979 in Germany’s Black Forest region. In 2009 he published Vier Augen (Four Eyes), an autobiographical graphic novel about his youth in the area. From 2002 to 2008 he studied at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, under Anke Feuchtenberger. Between 2003 and 2013 he co-published the comics anthology Orang, and in 2006 he was one of the initiators of the Comicfestival Hamburg in which he is still involved. Since 2016, he has been teaching at the University of Applied Sciences. His work Spinnenwald (Spider Forest) was published in 2019.

For me, the difference between travel photography and travel drawing is...
"For my book "In China", I kept a graphic diary. However, it was more about taking notes than an attempt to put any good drawings on paper. I’m not sure whether any ‘travel sketches’ really emerged during my stay in Chengdu. I would say that these were purely the preliminary steps on the way to my book. The final drawings were produced much after my trip and have little in common with photographs, I think."
When I draw, then...
"For me, drawing is something routine, not something ‘special’ that is related to a particular feeling or a particular attitude."
Inspirations on my ‘travels’ have been above all, the drawings of...
"...Yeung HokTak, whose graphic novel – How Blue Was My Valley – was way ahead its time. Chihoi Lee introduced me to the work of this Hong Kong-based illustrator during my first visit to China in 2004."

I would like to travel...
"I don’t have any such desire. I find the idea of ‘still’ wanting to travel to a place and to ‘capture’ something there rather strange. In the case of "In China" – and because a journey underpinned the idea – I chose the genre of the ‘travelogue’, but it was my first travelogue and I would also think of it as the last. To give literary expression to the experience of the journey, without eliminating the experience of 'foreignness' that tends towards a false romanticism or a political agenda, is what I have tried to do here. However, when I started working on the book, I had completely different ideas and concepts, which I discarded in the course of a full five years because they turned out to be worthless."

My reading for my next trip will include......
"Depends on where I go. At the moment, I have no great travel plans."

... at Graphic Travelogues

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