In spring 2025 we hosted a tribute to the late award-winning French photographer Matthieu Chazal (1975–2024), who documented life on the fault lines between East and West. A bon vivant and lover of life, he travelled the Black and Mediterranean Seas, from the Balkans to the Caucasus, from Greece to Armenia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Ukraine, in search of beauty. 
What he found was often devastatingly ugly. Never a “war photographer” – a label he detested – Chazal left an arresting record of this century’s conflicts. Yet in his images war is only ever a shadow: a broken bridge, a torn umbrella. Life remains centre-stage, all the more poignant for its fragility. 
Chazal first arrived in Odessa in 2011, and returned often after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He dreamed of creating a house of photography in this city. This exhibition, made possible by the Sutasoma Foundation with Ukrainian Cosmopolis and partners in France, is the first step toward realizing that vision.
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 Foundation, in partnership with Galerie HEGOA and Galerie Taylor in Paris, Picto, Imprimerie Escourbiac, Éditions Odyssée, and the Centre National des Arts

In the Press