An exhibition by renowned French photographer Matthieu Chazal is opening in Odessa — an event sure to captivate lovers of contemporary documentary photography. The works of the artist, known for his ability to capture fleeting yet profound moments of human life, will be presented in Ukraine for the first time, April 22 at ArtOdessa Gallery (Odessa City Garden).
He is represented by HEGOA Gallery and Taylor Gallery in France and by ArtOdessa Gallery in Ukraine.
The exhibition "Fault Lines", filled with subtle observations and visual poetry, offers viewers a unique perspective on everyday life, the anxieties of the modern world, and the power of human emotions.
About Matthieu Chazal
Matthieu Chazal is a French freelance photographer with degrees in philosophy, geography, and journalism, three disciplines that have guided his research. His work explores territories under tension and broken borders, and questions notions of cultural identity, memory, migration, and exile. He died after a valiant battle with illness on September 21, 2024.
After working for the daily Sud Ouest from 2001 to 2005, he produced reports in West Africa (Senegal, Niger), then a documentary project on Gypsies in Turkey. From 2009, he participated in group and solo exhibitions in France and Turkey (National Museum of Immigration History, Paris; Fotoistanbul festival, etc.).
For several years, Matthieu Chazal has travelled through Eastern Europe, Black Sea, Mediterranean and the Middle East, encountering a constellation of geographical, cultural and historical landscapes.
He composed series of “Chronicles” (from Iraq, Iran, the Caucasus, Ukraine, etc.) distinguished by several prizes and grants: grants from the CNAP and ADAGP, the Albert Kahn Museum prize, the W. Eugene Smith Fund (finalist), etc.
"Matthieu first came to Odessa in 2011, and then repeatedly after Russia’s full-scale invasion, beginning with March 2022. He fell in love with the city and together we dreamt of building a house of photography in Odessa," said the organizers.
Levant Series – Exhibition and Book
In the middle of old and new empires, Levant crosses the Bosphorus, which connects Black and Mediterranean Seas, a geographical boundary between East and West. Levant explores from East to West—from the Balkans to Caucasus, from Ukraine to Iran, Iraq, Syria, and beyond—the dilemmas of a huge region of cultural confluences and tensions, where several theaters of war are taking place.
Levant skirts the torments of the past written in the memory of the landscapes: the ancient Greek cities on Turkish coast, abandoned Armenian churches around Mount Ararat, thousands of graves lined up in the Srebrenica cemetery are all traces of a violent history. War returns: jihadists ravage Iraq and Syria, terrorize European capitals; Putin's Russia besieges the eastern borders of Europe. Horizons tilt, the earth trembles, the shockwave crosses the entire peninsula.
Past and contemporary torments Levant’s story its voice and rhythm and have traced the photographer's journey for the past fifteen years. Along his path: the migration crisis - bodies dumped in the Mediterranean and on Balkan roads – Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, tensions in the Caucasus, and the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine.
In these territories, Matthieu Chazal was photographing duality, opposites: tension that precedes the action, brutality of the fighting, lulls. Between two fires, a semblance of ordinary life: people get married, go to the cemetery, to school, to the market, to the baths; people gather and circulate, laugh or cry.
Levant is composed of daily life’s scenes, fields and wastelands, palaces and ruins, shimmering costumes and austere uniforms, padlocked borders and passes, dead ends, borders, horizons. At human height, Matthieu Chazal leaves room for the spontaneity of the characters who enter the frame, for the disparity of their feelings and passions. He captures on the fly trivial and modest adventures, almost nothings that give the story a theatrical dimension.
There, violence and truce, adventure, wandering, waiting, fragile balance between order and disorder, life and death.
This exhibition is made possible by the Sutasoma Foundation, with the help of Ukrainian Cosmopolis and Gallerie HEGOA, Galerie Taylor, Picto, ImprimerieEscourbiac, Editions Odyssée, Centre National des Arts.
