This article examines how transgender themes are conveyed in two Swedish graphic narratives. Olivia Skoglund’s debut graphic memoir, Nästan i mål! En komisk transition [Almost there: A comical transition] (2020) follows Olivia who navigates as a trans woman through a clueless cis society, while Elias Ericson’s graphic novel Diana & Charlie (2021) depicts the relationship be-tween two transgender friends and their struggle to find emotional stability in a heteronormative society. Drawing on Elisabeth El Rafaie’s visual meta-phor theory of pictorial, spatial and stylistic metaphors, it is argued that both Skoglund and Ericson place bodily experience, appearance, and perception at the centre of their concerns of being transgender, conveying the struggle for gender recognition as well as showing the misgendering of trans people by society.

This paper examines the work of Swedish comics creator Simon Gardenfors, Simons 120 dagar, as an example of autobiographical comic art in which the concepts of performance and performativity, as developed by Erika Fischer-Lichte, are applied to explore aspects of self-construction. It discusses Gardenfors' performative action as a means of extracting experiences with the intention of making artistic work. Self-construction is shaped in relation to the participants in the art project. The work is the product of a social project, but also in relation to elements staged before the advent of the work. By exploring how Gardenfors' idea was enunciated and what it achieved, we can examine how he stretches compositional limits and how his graphic memoir becomes a part of a larger artistic event. By working as a performance artist during his production of the book, and by commenting and sometimes interacting with his readers in blog form before, during and after, Gardenfors' work attains a performative dimension.

This article examines the use of photography in relation to the creation of meaning in graphic memoirs. The use of photography is contextualised as one of a range of documentary sources, and discussed as a means of mediating other forms which otherwise would not be readily included in the graphic novel format. Authenticity is explored in relation to the autobiographical works of two Nordic authors, Hanneriina Moisseinen and Mats Jonsson in which it is possible to see the role of photography in the reflexive gaze, and in the creation and management of self-image. It is argued that photographic images are a mixture of candid and posed, public and private, and are strategically used to convey a sense of process in the creation of identity. In addition, they contribute to the creation of cultural memory and its dissemination to new audiences. The article also illustrates how photographs themselves can be mediated as drawings, and how they relate to peritext, fictionalisation and narrative framing, aiding in the exploration of themes of loss, identity, and memory creation.

Cet article s’intéresse à l’usage de la photographe dans ses rapports avec la production du sens dans les mémoires graphiques. Cet usage est contextualisé comme une des sources documentaires possibles, et on l’aborde comme un instrument de médiation avec d’autres formes que sans cela il serait difficile d’inclure dans le format du roman graphique. Nous étudions plus particulièrement la notion d’authenticité dans les travaux autobiographiques de deux auteurs noridiques, Hanneriina Moisseinen et Mats Jonsson, dont l’écriture a une forte dimension réflexive et contribue à la mise en place et la gestion d’une image de soi. L’analayse cherche à démonter que les images photographiques sont un mélange de caméra cachée et d’images posées, tant publiques que privées. En plus, ces images jouent aussi un rôle dans la production d’une mémoire culturelle et de sa dissémination à travers de nouveaux publics. L’article examine aussi comment ces images photographiques peuvent être communiquées comme des dessins, quel est leur rapport avec les notions de péritexte, de fictionnalisatio et de cadrage narratif, et comment elles servent aussi à explorer les thèmes de la perte, de l’identité et de la création mémorielle.