Lucien Clergue
Detail; Les geantes, Camargue, 1978
Gelatin silver print (black & white)
11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Private collection
Lucien Clergue, (French, 1934-2014)
Les Geàntes, Camargue
Gelatin silver
14 x 20-1/2 inches
Private collection
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Lucien Clergue (August 14, 1934
– November 15, 2014) was a French photographer. He was Chairman of the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris for 2013.
Clergue was born in Arles, France. At the age of 7 he
began learning to play the violin, and after several years of study his teacher
admitted that he had nothing more to teach him. Clergue was from a family of
shopkeepers and could not afford to pursue further studies in a college or
university school of music, such as a conservatory. In 1949, he learned the
basics of photography. Four years later, at a corrida in Arles, he showed his
photographs to Spanish painter Pablo Picasso who, though subdued, asked to see
more of his work. Within a year and a half, young Clergue worked on his
photography with the goal of sending more images to Picasso. During this
period, he worked on a series of photographs of traveling entertainers,
acrobats and harlequins, the « Saltimbanques ». He also worked on a series
whose subject was carrion.
Lucien Clergue
Les geantes, Camargue, 1978
Gelatin silver print (black & white)
11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Private collection
In 1968, and with his friend Michel Tournier, Clergue
founded the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival which is held annually in
July in Arles.
Clergue’s photographs are in the collections of
numerous well-known museums and private collectors. His photographs have been
exhibited in over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide, with noted exhibitions such
as in 1961, at the Museum of Modern Art New York.
He was named Knight of the Légion
d'honneur in 2003 and elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts of the
Institute of France on May 31, 2006, at the same time as a new section
dedicated to photography was created. Clergue was the first photographer to enter
the Academy to a position devoted specifically to photography. More on Lucien Clergue
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