1934-2014

Lucien Clergue is an archetypical Renaissance man who studied under Roland Barthes, received his doctorate from the University of Provence, Marseilles, and produced books, films and photographs.  The camera was a way out of an adolescence that included the World War II bombing of his home and subsequent death of his mother.  In the ’50s and the ’70s, Clergue made his signature nude photographs of undulating torsos.  That physicality was replicated in bullfight images and later studies of organic fragments connoting loss and decay.  Picasso endorsed his work; Cocteau and other artists joined with him to form an intellectual corps.  Clergue founded the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Europe’s major photography conference.  His work is in many major museums.