postcard of the 31st Diamond Pepper Festival
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- Sat, 9 Sep 2023 13:54:20 +0330
Artist
Biography
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), the German news magazine Der Spiegel 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 and the rise of the Swiss People's Party. Chappatte lives between Los Angeles and Geneva.
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 and 2015, Chappatte won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Thomas Nast Award for best cartoons on international affairs. He is the only non-American to have won this prize.
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.
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."
