Patrick Chappatte
Patrick Chappatte (known simply as Chappatte, born 1967 in Karachi, Pakistan) is a Lebanese-Swiss cartoonist who draws for Le Temps, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Sunday edition) and the International New York Times. Born to a Lebanese mother and a Swiss father he was raised in Singapore and Switzerland. He also worked as an illustrator for the New York Times and as cartoonist for Newsweek. Many of his cartoons reflect events in Swiss and international news, such as the 9/11 attacks, the rise of the Swiss People's Party, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Chappatte lives between Los Angeles and Geneva.
Editorial cartoons
Patrick Chappatte draws a twice-weekly cartoon in the Opinion section of The International New York Times, formerly known as the International Herald Tribune, which has published his work since 2001. His cartoons are featured on the newspaper's website.
Over the years, he has collaborated with editorial cartoonists in conflict-ridden countries with the goal of promoting dialogue through cartooning. These projects focused on Serbia, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Kenya and Guatemala. He described the work in a TED talk in 2010.
In 2011, Chappatte won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Thomas Nast Award for best cartoons on international affairs, becoming the first non-American to win this prize.
Comics journalism
Since 1995, Chappatte has worked in graphic journalism, or comics journalism, a genre of reporting using the techniques of graphic novels. His most recent stories covered the war in Gaza (2009), the slums of Nairobi (2010) and gang violence in Central America (2012). These reports were published in several newspapers, including the New York Times; one was turned into a short animated documentary in 2011. (see below)
Animated documentary
Chappatte went to southern Lebanon in 2009, where people still live with the threat of actual time bombs, in the form of cluster-munition bomblets. While there, the editorial cartoonist created a report in comic-book format: Death in the Field. The report was released in 2011 as an animated documentary. It was aired on Swiss and French TV, toured documentary festivals, and won an award in Australia.
Chappatte said the process of creating the documentary was both a personal and professional endeavour. "I have a Swiss father and a Lebanese mother, so I wanted to better understand the problems that the people of Lebanon are still facing, long after the fighting stopped," he said. "I also wanted to use my craft as a cartoonist, my experience as a journalist and my sense of satire to create a new kind of prism through which to view forgotten conflicts and a new technique for revealing the humanity behind the story."
Books in English
Stress Test, Globe Cartoon/IHT, 2012
Signs of recovery, Globe Cartoon/IHT, 2010
Partly cloudy, Globe Cartoon/IHT, 2008
Globalized, Globe Cartoon/IHT, 2007
Another world, Globe Cartoon/IHT, 2004
External links
- Chappatte's website
- Comics journalism by Chappatte
- "Inside Death Row" (with Anne-Frédérique Widmann) Five-part series published in the New York Times (retrieved 8 May 2016)
- An interview with Chappatte over the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons
- Patrick Chappatte at TED
