Lucien Clergue - Brasília - 2013

Born in Arles in 1934 and died in November 2014, founder of the Rencontres d'Arles International Photography Festival, now world-renowned, Lucien Clergue is one of the most renowned French photographers of our time. The subjects of his photographic work—travels of artists, Gypsies, ruins of war and tombs, vegetation of the Camargue, stretches of sand and scenes of bullfighting—reveal a deep imprint in his native land. He owes his first fame to his nude photographs, whose sensual play of light and volumes with the marine environment captivated Picasso and Cocteau to the point of making them, until their deaths, the unwavering ambassadors of the photographer. This work is the first to reproduce Clergue's work devoted to the architectural creations of Brazil, in 1962–1963, particularly of its new capital Brasilia, designed largely by the architect Oscar Niemeyer who had just died in December 2012. Lucien Clergue's eye admirably captured the elan and the intangible beauty of the new metropolis with harmonious curves and still inhabited by the confident utopianism of modernist architecture. Lucien Clergue died on 15 November 2014 in Nîmes.


In the gallery, a few images from inside the book.