By Francky Blandeau, Editor in chief of Rézo International (French cultural magazine)

Born in 1977, Cyril Horiszny is Franco-Ukrainian. When growing up in Paris’ lower-class multi-ethnic districts, he observed the inhabitants and their culture. Later on, the young photographer explored and experienced the views of New York city in 1998, then of Moscow, the Canadian West and the Caribbean. On obtaining a Master’s degree in History at the Sorbonne and completing a summer course at Harvard, in 2001 he returned to the area of his special interest : Eastern Europe and particularly Ukraine, his grand-parents’ homeland.

There he started making black-and-white pictures on a people little yet known to the West. This rediscovery of his roots made him look for his own identity. Since then, he has been trying to peer into the soul of a nation, into their national and regional realities.
Cyril Horiszny perceives Ukraine with a mature and discerning eye, helped along by his double culture and his knowledge of the place. When art and feeling shape the representation of reality, the outcome is a true social poetry about the urban and rural life of Ukraine.

Attracted by the diverse and complex post-Soviet space, the photojournalist has chosen portraiture and the ambience of Eastern Europe as his primary leitmotiv. From Ukraine to Russia, Georgia to Belarus, he has travelled throughout the former Soviet Union practicing his art with a documentary eye. Through his photos and texts he voices the mysterious past and the hard transition of young states under reconstruction.

In between his reports and his stays in Paris and Kiev, he explores artistic photography in his adopted city : Lviv, in Western Ukraine. A real museum in the open air, this Ukrainian spiritual center with a touch of Vienna is a valuable source of inspiration and creativity for the photographer.
In addition, he promotes photography at the crossroads of the West and the East. He has organized in Lviv the exhibition “My France” by the master of photography André Kertesz in 2004 and the Second International Festival “Angles of view”, held jointly with the French Embassy in Ukraine in 2005. Head of the French Center in Lviv from 2003 to 2005, Cyril Horiszny has devoted his time to photojournalism since 2006.

Horiszny’s work has been published internationally in Le Monde, The Financial Times, Der Spiegel, La Croix, VSD, Elle, among others, and exhibited in Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona, Toronto, Stockholm, Berlin, and Kyïv. His pictures on the Orange Revolution appeared in the book Even the snow was orange by French journalist Alain Guillemoles in 2005.

  Wikipedia (in Ukrainian)