Emmanuelle Auzias

Le Canard Enchaîné, The Chained Duck, is a French satirical weekly newspaper founded in 1915 during the World War I by Maurice and Jeanne Marechal.

Its name is a reference to a previous newspaper L'homme Libre, The Free Man, which was forced to close by government censorship and reacted upon its reopening by changing its name to L'homme Enchaîné, The Chained-up Man. After the WW I, to celebrate the end of the military censorship of the press, the owners of the weekly changed briefly its title to Le Canard Déchaîné, The Duck Unbound, means he's out of control!

In French slang, "canard" means Newspaper.

While it features investigative journalism mainly about Politic and Business affairs and scandals, it well represents the French free-speech tradition of biting and satirical cartoons. Most of the early contributors were members of the Communist and Socialist parties, but this alignment stopped in the 20s. The weekly has gained its reputation by publishing incriminating stories from source leaks and by criticizing any political party. It is also fairly anti-clerical and it lampoons the nobility.
Its current owners are not tied to any political or economic group and do not accept any advertisements. Today, around 700,000 copies are printed and sold each week.

For this series of mixed media collages, I collected the Chained Duck during one year starting from the last US presidential election. I went through all the cartoons caricaturing humoristicly politics and scandals. Then, I identified the main topics which were addressed during that period of time, and I decided to move ahead with the ones that were the most appealing to me: Trump, Macron (the French president elected in May 2017), the sexual harassment against women, the global warming and the dirty money. Each collage reflects one of these topic.