Lucien Clergue - Brasília - 2013

Born in Arles in 1934 and died in November 2014, founder of the International Photography Festival 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 — artists' travels, Romani people, ruins of war and graves, vegetation of the Camargue, stretches of sand, and scenes of bullfighting — reveal a deep imprint in his native land. He first rose to fame with his nude photographs, whose sensuous play of light and volumes with the marine environment won over Picasso and Cocteau to the point of making them, until their deaths, the photographer’s unwavering ambassadors. This volume is the first to reproduce Clergue's work devoted to the architectural creations of Brazil, in 1962-1963, particularly of its new capital Brasília, largely designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer who had just passed away in December 2012. Lucien Clergue's eye admirably captured the momentum and the intangible beauty of the new metropolis with its harmonious curves 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.