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8/10/2019 On the Death of Lucien Clergue
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The Death of Lucien Clergue
All Lucien Clergue photographs courtesy Anne Clergue
Published at Hyperallergic asRemembering French Photographer Lucien Clergue, a Giant of the Field
http://hyperallergic.com/163114/remembering-french-photographer-lucien-clergue-a-giant-of-the-field/
Nu zbr (2009)
Close to the termination of Paris Photo (the international art fair for works in the
photographic medium), the French art scene was distressed by the melancholy news that
pioneer art photographer Lucien Clergue, co-creator of the Rencontres d'Arles (the largest
event dedicated to photography in Europe) died Saturday at the age of 80.
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Clergue had been elected member of the Acadmie des Beaux-Arts in 2006 and was
responsible for the creation of the National School of Photography in Arles. He was an
immensely productive photographer and photography activist (creator of some 800,000
photographs and 75 photography books), justly celebrated for series of rather austere
works depicting the terrible beauty of the bullfight, the enchanting/poignant life of
gypsies, the magnificence of the stark female nude, and terrific portraits of Jean Cocteau
and Pablo Picasso. He was married to the art curator Yolande Clergue, founder of The
Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles.
I met him through his two daughters, Anne Clergue, galleriest and curator of
contemporary art, and Olivia Clergue, handbag fashion designer and goddaughter ofPicasso, who the young Lucien approached at a corrida in Arles, befriended, and
extensively photo documented; revealing the great painter in his studio cuddling his dog,
smoking, sunbathing, watching bullfights, enjoying Gitan culture, enthralled.
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Picasso prside la corrida Frjus (1962)
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Le labyrinthe de la mort Arles (1969)
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On forme le cercle (1955)
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Born in Arles in 1934 of modest background, Clergue discovered photography in 1949.
His first book of photos, Corps mmorable, was published by ditions Pierre Seghers in
1957 and is accompanied by poems of the surrealist poet Paul luard, an introduction by
Cocteau, and a cover by Picasso. I deem Luciens best work as always retaining
something of that surrealist spirit. Indeed I dreamed of Lucien last night as a great flock
of white Camargue flamingos, flying backwards.
Double exposure bullfighting Madrid (1992)
The light in his work is usually hot, smooth and trembling; as we can see in his vellum-
like photos of dying bulls, Gypsies dancing in the heat, and beautiful women rolling
wildly naked on the beach. Through his choice of subject, and his compositional
astuteness, I greatly admired his ability to wrench out of cold capture technology - with
its mechanical apparatus of moving metallic parts, polished glass and chemicals -
something of the southern Mediterranean sun - something of the rapture of the warm life
of daydreams, despair, lull, love and yearning. My feeling is that he defeated the coldness
of capture technology through his humility, perplexing the cameras all-devouring, all-
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devastating, omni-voraciousness. Within the game of mechanical technology, he
managed to insert something of the elusive prehistoric world and its healing mythologies,
and reinstate a resistance of contemplative quietude.
Nu de la mer Camargue, in Ne de la Vague (1964)
I mention this word "resistance" with caution, not seeking to invoke examples of useless
failed revolutions of the past, but to think about the problem of art in the post-
photographic electronic age in a way that Walter Benjamin devoted himself; to the
problems of image production that assumes a dialogically (and dialectically) configured
subject, shaping artistic warmth through technological decisions.
All photographs courtesy Anne Clergue
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Portrait de Picasso dans son atelier Notre Dame de Vie Mougins (1969)
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Le dernier portrait Notre Dame de Vie, Mougins, Mars (1971)
Joseph Nechvatal
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