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 zébré” (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.

Clergue had been elected member of the Académie 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 of

Picasso, 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.

“Picasso préside la corrida Fréjus” (1962)

“Le labyrinthe de la mort Arles” (1969)

“On forme le cercle” (1955)

“Manitas et J.Reyes” (1955)

It is agonizing that Lucien’s dear Gitan friend, Manitas de Plata, the legendary gypsy

guitarist, also died very recently - on Nov. 6th. I will never forget the evening Lucien

took me to a little pizza place during the Feria d'Arles run by gypsies where they played

and sang pulsing flamenco music – wildly, almost fiercely, dancing for each other. We

two were the only non-Gitans there, but I could feel the same blood circulating through

my veins.

Born in Arles in 1934 of modest background, Clergue discovered photography in 1949.

His first book of photos, Corps mémorable, was published by Éditions Pierre Seghers in

1957 and is accompanied by poems of the surrealist poet Paul Éluard, an introduction by

Cocteau, and a cover by Picasso. I deem Lucien’s 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 camera’s all-devouring, all-

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 Née 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

“Portrait de Picasso dans son atelier Notre Dame de Vie Mougins” (1969)

“Le dernier portrait Notre Dame de Vie, Mougins, Mars” (1971)

Joseph Nechvatal