Lucien Clergue (1934 to present)Lucien Clergue was born in Arles, France. He was introduced to photography in 1949 at the age of 15. He has a wide range of subject matters, He did a series of images on gypsies in southern France as well as a series on bullfights, specifically the death and killing of the bulls, called "Toros Muertos." Other subject matters discussed below include; traveling performers in France, Pablo Picasso, and nude images.
(above) Lucien Clergue in Vienna in 2007
Clergue did a series of images documenting a group of traveling performers, including; acrobats, dancers, and harlequins called the "Saltimbanques".
(above) "Dancer aux afflches" Lucien Clergue, Arles, 1954
(above) "Violinist with dancers" Lucien Clergue, Arles, 1955
Clergue and Pablo Picasso's friendship of 30 years is what really propelled his career in photography in the first place. In 1954, Clergue showed Picasso some of his images at a Bullfighting event and Picasso was intrigued with Clergue's work. They continued to share each others work with one another after that, Clergue sent all of his images to Picasso.
(below) "Picasso" Lucien Clergue 1969
As I was looking at many of Clergue's images, I found that many are nudes, I was interested in his series of images that depict women's bodies with light strewn across them in geometric patterns. These images reminded me of another French photographer who did very similar images, Fernand Fossagrives. Fossagrives was born in 1910 in France, he worked mainly in the 1940s in New York City. Fossagrives was possibly developing his nude images of "Light and Shadow" a bit earlier than Clergue was, I am sure Fossagrives inspired him to photograph these nude images, also taken in New York City. Both photographers' images are stunning, I love how the light bends around the curves of the women's bodies and how the lines compete for your attention in the picture, rather than it just being a photograph of a nude body. You can tell both photographers tried to get the lines to line up just right on the bodies, so it creates a much more interesting line, they both wanted to showcase the curves and contours that make up a woman's body. Also, notice how none of the images have faces, they are purely body images. The essence of light and shadow is portrayed perfectly here, where dark and light co-exist, on something so primitive as a nude human body, the perfect canvas.
(above) Lucien Clergue, New York City
(above) Lucien Clergue, New York City
(above) Lucien Clergue, New York City
(above) "Light and Shadow" Fernand Fossagrives 1956
(above) "Contours" Fernand Fossagrives
Great work.
ReplyDelete