Lucien Clergue - Brasília - 2013

Born in Arles in 1934 and died in November 2014, founder of the International Festival of Photography Rencontres d'Arles, today world-renowned, Lucien Clergue is one of the most reputable French photographers of our time. The subjects of his photographic work — artists' travels, Gypsies, war ruins and tombs, vegetation of the Camargue, expanses of sand and bullfighting scenes — reveal a deep imprint in his homeland. He owes his first fame to his nude photos, whose sensuous play of light and volumes with the marine environment seduced Picasso and Cocteau to the point of making them, until their deaths, the photographer's unwavering ambassadors. 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, largely designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer who had just died in December 2012. The eye of Lucien Clergue admirably captured the momentum and the intangible beauty of the new metropolis with harmonious curves still inhabited by the confident utopianism of modernist architecture. Lucien Clergue died on November 15, 2014 in Nîmes.

In the gallery a few images from the interior of the book.