A tribute-exhibition to the late award-winning French photographer Matthieu Chazal (1975–2024).
Matthieu first came to Odessa – a city he fell for instantly – in 2011, and then returned repeatedly after Russia’s full-scale invasion, beginning with early March 2022.
Matthieu documented life on the fault lines between East and West. A hedonist and a bon vivant, Chazal spent nearly two decades travelling around the Black and the Mediterranean Seas, from the Balkans to the Caucuses, from Greece to Armenia, from Ukraine to Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran in search of beauty. But his journey kept leading him to the ugliness of war.
Not a war photographer by vocation – a title he detested – Chazal left behind an arresting record of some of this century’s most harrowing conflicts. A philosopher by training and disposition, Chazal produced oblique and deeply humane meditations on life with and despite war’s horrors. Soldiers sip tea in breaks between fighting, take afternoon naps, bathe in a river. People shop, laugh and marry. War is only ever there by hint: a broken bridge or a broken umbrella. Here life is centre stage, ever more vivid for its fragility.
The exhibition featured works from Levant, the book he published just before death, alongside never-before-seen photographs from Ukraine. Held at the municipal gallery ArtOdessa, it was made possible by the British Sutasoma Trust, in partnership with Galerie HEGOA and Galerie Taylor in Paris, Picto, Imprimerie Escourbiac, Éditions Odyssée, and the Centre National des Arts

In the Press