André Fougeron, Atlantic Civilisation

"The image is packed with conflicting narratives of corruption, rooted in colonialism, class and capitalism. Reference is made to the French colonial wars in Indo-China through the posters of the colonial parachutists and the returning coffins with mourners set against the Asian woman with a dead child. This last image quotes from Guernica (Museo de Reina Sofía, Madrid), the 1937 mural by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) that epitomised the civilian cost of war. There are allusions to the consequences of other French colonial policies: the subjugation of black Africa in the person of the child shoe-shine and of North Africa in the immigrant Algerians sheltering under corrugated iron (at the bottom left). Fougeron re-used this particular detail in his 'triptych of shame' of which Massacre at Sakiet III (...) is a part. In Atlantic Civilisation Fougeron addressed more general fears about the break-down of family life by showing old people abandoned on a bench, the mother and children living in a tent, and a circle of children engulfed by industrial pollution. That these contrasts are borne of class disparities is emphasised through the juxtapositions of Algerians next to the middle-class children in their camouflaged air-raid shelter, and the shoe-shine in a vest next to pet dogs in coats." [source]