Lucien Clergue - Brasília - 2013

Born in Arles in 1934 and died in November 2014, founder of the International Festival of Photography of the Rencontres d'Arles, today world-famous, Lucien Clergue is one of the most renowned French photographers of our time. The subjects of his photographic work — artist travels, Romani people, ruins of war and graves, vegetation of the Camargue, stretches of sand and bullfighting scenes — reveal a deep imprint in his native land. He owes his first fame to his nude photographs, whose sensual play of light and volume with the marine environment attracted Picasso and Cocteau to the point that, until their deaths, they became the photographer's unfailing ambassadors. This work is the first to reproduce Clergue's work devoted to the architectural creations of Brazil, in 1962-1963, in particular of its new capital Brasilia, designed largely by the architect Oscar Niemeyer who had just passed away in December 2012. The eye of Lucien Clergue admirably managed to capture the momentum 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 November 15, 2014 in Nîmes.

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