Founder of Les Rencontres d’Arles, the first ˛international photography festival, Lucien Clergue (1934 – 2014) is a photographer known for his series of nudes in the sea, and for his close relationship with Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. He was the first ever photographer to be elected at the Institut de France-Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2006 for his art and his multiple contributions to culture. Arles, where he grew up and lived all his life, is an overwhelming heritage city built by the Romans as one of their decentralised capitals. Located in the South of France on wetlands, it has a peculiar light which attracted the painter Vincent Van Gogh, who produced some of his most famous paintings there. Arles is also home to many gypsy (Romani) families. Once a year in May, Roma from across Europe make a pilgrimage to the nearby village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. This village is home to Saint Sarah, also known as Sara-la-Kâli, the patron saint of the Romani people.
Arles was the first resource for Clergue as a photographer in the 50s. This was shortly after World War II when many Roma were freed from internment camps, much later than any other group. Many made their way to Arles where Clergue forged a close relationship with the community given many were his neighbours in the famous Roquette district neighbourhood and along the nearby Rhône river where his mother had a grocery store.
Gypsy Tempo reveals the daily life of gypsy families; their nomadic lifestyle, the role of religion, and how music and dance is used to tell stories. Documentation of gipsies during this period is limited due to the discrimination they faced that continues on today. Clergue’s close ties to the community allowed him to be continually welcomed back over the decades.
During this time Clergue discovered, and then helped propel to fame, the gypsy guitar maestro Manitas de Plata and his friend Jose Reyes (who went on to found Gipsy Kings). Clergue himself was a trained violin player and held a deep appreciation for music. Manitas went on to become a major musician of the 60s and together with Clergue toured the world, including concerts in Japan.
Clergue took advantage of these trips to meet American west coast photographers including Ansel Adams andEdward Weston, considered the first stars of modern poetic and landscape photography. He invited them to show their work in Arles at the young festival he had just created in 1970 with his friend Jean-Maurice Rouquette. Adams and Weston’s presence was the real kick off point for the world’s first ever photography festival which later inspired KYOTOGRAPHIE and many others.
From Arles to New York Carnegie Hall, this is a rare look at some of Lucien Clergue’s best photographs.
Lucien Clergue (1934–2014), grew up in Arles, in southern France. Both for his contribution to photography and music, his city of Arles, where Vincent Van Gogh produced his best paintings, is at the heart of his work. At the age of ten he experienced the destruction and poverty of war, which had a deep effect on him. He was gifted a box camera in 1948 by his mother who was running a grocery store. She thought he would be an artist and he studied violin, and developed an interest in photography. He received the blessing of the painter Pablo Picasso in 1953 for his pictures of kids in war ruins of Arles, dead animals in frozen Camargue wetland landscapes, and bullfights. His series of nudes in the waves made him famous in the 1970’s, a time of sexual freedom in the West.
In 1969, he launched the photographic festival: les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie of Arles, which has since become the international annual meeting for photography lovers, professionals and amateurs. During the same time period, he discovered the soon worldwide famous gypsy guitar player Manitas de Plata, uncle of the future Gipsy kings, and became his impresario. This was also the start of a long series of pictures in the intimacy of the important Gypsy community of the Camargue. In 2006 Lucien Clergue was the first photographer to become a member of l’Institut de France, at Académie des Beaux Arts. In 2008 he was decorated with the title of Commandeur of the Order of Arts and Letters, and in 2015 he had a major retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris.
