Collection of photographs by
Patrick Chauvel

This permanent exhibition, both self-guided and free of charge, traces the career of the reporter Patrick Chauvel in all the conflicts on which he has reported throughout the world over the past 50 years. An invaluable photographic testimony!
Patrick Chauvel

Patrick Chauvel, reporter, photographer, documentary maker, and writer, has covered more than 50 years of conflicts.

Patrick Chauvel was born in 1949 in Paris, the grandson of the ambassador Jean Chauvel and the son of Jean-François Chauvel, a member of the Resistance and soldier in the 2nd Armored Division, and Antonia Luciani, also a member of the Resistance and of the SAS during the World War II.

  • Now a renowned reporter, photographer, documentarian, and writer, he began in 1967 with a report on the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
  • In 1968 he set off to cover the war in Vietnam. He stayed there until 1974, whilst also covering other conflicts in Cambodia, Ireland, Mozambique, and Angola. In April 1974 he was seriously injured in a mortar attack 11 kilometers from Phnom Penh.
  • In 1975 he joined the agency Sygma and left to cover the war in Lebanon. As a contributor to the magazine Newsweek, he photographed the wars in Latin America, the Iranian Revolution, the Battle of Kolwezi, the siege of Sarajevo, the American intervention in Somalia and Haiti, and the war in Chechnya, among others.
  • In 1998, with Antoine Novat, he directed the documentary film Rapporteurs de Guerre (War Reporters), questioning why reporters become involved in the profession, and has written about his own reasons for doing so in various accounts and novels.
  • Patrick Chauvel remains in the field, in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and recently in Ukraine. He continues to work as a journalist, through photographs, films, texts, etc.
  • Patrick Chauvel, also co-founder of the WARM Foundation, already present at the Memorial Museum, created the Patrick Chauvel Foundation in 2014 to bring together his work and offer a reflection on the role of journalists in war zones.
The permanent exhibition

The permanent exhibition

The museum’s permanent exhibition displays more than 100 photos selected from the Patrick Chauvel collection!

Visitors can discover a permanent exhibition presenting around a hundred photographs. From Vietnam in 1968 to Ukraine in 2019, the photographer recounts past and presents wars. This space, dedicated to 50 years of work in the field, reminds visitors of the complex history of the 20th and 21st centuries, while highlighting the values and ethics of the profession of journalist. Patrick Chauvel is, in particular, covering the Russian war in Ukraine. Since February 2023, the reporter has displayed a selection of photographs of the conflict at the Memorial Museum.

This exhibition is completely open and free of charge.

An entire area dedicated to Patrick Chauvel’s archives has been created at the Caen Memorial Museum.

This unique documentary source is composed of 380,000 images, including 80,000 in digital format, indexed in France and English, and almost 1,000 hours of video, covering almost all conflicts during the Cold War and the period since 9/11. Prints, negatives, slides, videos, and manuscripts have therefore been gathered together and are accessible for the first time.

Thanks to the regular presence of the reporter, the Patrick Chauvel Foundation and the Caen Memorial Museum propose educational events about contemporary conflicts, the role of the reporter, and the interpretation of reports.

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Mémorial de Caen
Press kit (french)

Press kit (french)

Collection of photographs by Patrick Chauvel
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