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Homage to Odessa
A memoir in pictures & words
I’ve been tempted to write a lengthy encomium about the city of Odessa in the south west of Ukraine, which I went to once on business and immediately fell in love with, and resolved never to leave. Reality getting the better of romance, I did actually leave a few days after I’d arrived, but — in the manner of romantic cities everywhere — some part of me stayed there, and remains to the present day. This isn’t a political post by the way, I’ve said what I’ve said about the situation in Ukraine, which is that I deplore the Russian invasion, and that’s that, but if you’ve been to a place and loved it, it’s hard not to feel for it again, when it is so obviously in need.
The circumstances of life mean that I’ll probably never go to Odessa again, although outside of a very few places it is one of those that, as I rose grandly to the top of the aircraft’s boarding steps, I turned and looked at with a steely, historical eye and said, ‘I will return.’ I was trying to explain all this to a friend recently in some messages, and I made a clumsy if heartfelt comparison of Odessa with Paris. It isn’t anything like Paris, and it does both cities an injustice to even try and compare them, but there is one aspect of that comparison that I would defend, in that both of them are unique, a thing you can’t say of all cities. As I burbled to my friend, if Paris kidnaps you with its flair, Odessa picks your pocket, but then buys you a drink with the proceeds. It is a rogue of a town, a seaport where the bones of the drowned elbow you for room at the bar, and the bullet holes from the last occupation guide you back to the doorman with a oddly Hitler-ish moustache, who winks as you stumble through the Art Deco doors of what you hope was your hotel.
I don’t exactly know what it is, although I have a suspicion, but something about Odessa’s dark and reckless charm appealed to me at a primal, alcoholic level, that drew me to it like few other places. Given everything, it is probably just as well that I left when I did.
Odessa, for me anyway, is impossible to put into words, which is why I wanted to write less and show more, in this case through the fantastically evocative photos of Marzena Pogorzaly, whose images capture this beautiful, unstable and timeless city, like no others I’ve seen. I’m very grateful to her for allowing me to use them here.
Nick Jordan
