Surreal Photography Lucien Clergue

"Lucien Clergue was born in 1934 in Arles, Southern France. The only son of shop owners, Clergue’s early life was interupted by the experience of poverty and destruction brought on by the war years. In 1952, at the age of 18, he was faced with the untimely death of his mother. Clergue channeled his energies into shooting photographs with a box camera his mother had gifted him a few years before her passing.
Clergue taught himself photography in his free time while working in Southern France. He quickly built a reputation for himself, and over the years formed lasting and influential relationships with many renowned artists, collectors, and benefactors, including Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, St. John Perse, Roland Barthes, Michel Tournier, James Jones, Ansel Adams, Andre Kertesz, Irwing Shaw, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Eikoh Hosoe, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau.

 The myriad of subject matter featured in Clergue’s work includes a series depicting the war ruins of Arles, Spanish bullfighters, the French countryside, and of course, the female nude. The brilliance and integrity of his vision has led many private collectors and institutions to seek out and exhibit his work. In 1961, Edward Steichen invited him to undertake a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art. The next year he exhibited again, this time at the pavillon de Marsan, Palais du Louvre, Paris.

Clergue has since been decorated with the honor of the National Order of Merit by President Giscard d'Estaing in 1979, and in 2003 received the highest honor bestowed by the the French Ministry of Culture as a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur. In 2006 he became the first photographer to be a member of the Academy of Fine Arts of the Institute of France. In 1969 he founded and organized The Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie of Arles, which celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2004 with an exhibition homage for Clergue’s 70th birthday."(louissternfinearts.com)

Photo Gallery

Lucien Clergue

Lucien Clergue (August 14, 1934 – November 15, 2014) was a French photographer. He was Chairman of the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris for 2013.Lucien Clergue was born in Arles, France. At the age of 7 he began learning to play the violin, and after several years of study his teacher admitted that he had nothing more to teach him. Clergue was from a family of shopkeepers and could not afford to pursue further studies in a college or university school of music, such as a conservatory. In 1949, he learned the basics of photography. Four years later, at a corrida in Arles, he showed his photographs to Spanish painter Pablo Picasso who, though subdued, asked to see more of his work. Within a year and a half, young Clergue worked on his photography with the goal of sending more images to Picasso. During this period, he worked on a series of photographs of traveling entertainers, acrobats and harlequins, the « Saltimbanques ». He also worked on a series whose subject was carrion.

In 1968, and with his friend Michel Tournier, Clergue founded the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival which is held annually in July in Arles. He exhibited his work at the festival during the years 1971–1973, 1975, 1979, 1982–1986, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994, 2000, 2003 and 2007.
Clergue also illustrated books, among them a book by writer Yves Navarre.
Clergue took many photographs of the gypsies of southern France, and was instrumental in propelling the guitarist Manitas de Plata to fame.

Clergue’s photographs are in the collections of numerous well-known museums and private collectors. His photographs have been exhibited in over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide, with noted exhibitions such as in 1961, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, the last exhibition organized by Edward Steichen with Lucien Clergue, Bill Brandt and Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Museums with large collections of his work include The Fogg Museum at Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work, Fontaines du Grand Palais (Fountains of the Grand Palais), is in Museo cantonale d'arte of Lugano. His photographs of Jean Cocteau are on permanent display at the Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton, France. In the U.S., an exhibition of the Cocteau photographs was premiered at Westwood Gallery, New York City.
In 2007, the city of Arles honored Lucien Clergue and dedicated a retrospective collection of 360 of his photographs dating from 1953 to 2007. He also received the 2007 Lucie Award.Wikipedia