Lucien Clergue was born in Arles, a city in the France’s Provence region. The city was home and inspiration to Picasso, Gauguin and perhaps most notably, Van Gogh. It is a region rich in history and the arts, and as Clergue grew up the moods and people of the area became part of his sensibility and vision.
Although well known for his studies of the nude (he had four books published on that theme, including Nude Workshop, (Viking Press), Clergue was also an accomplished landscape, and street photographer. He had one-man shows all over the world and his work is in the permanent collections of many museums.
He was a well-known lecturer and participated in workshops throughout the United States and France, including the Ansel Adams Workshop, the Maine Photography Workshop, and the New School in New York. He founded the Annual Festival of Photography in Arles, and also produced a number of short films, including a 1971 retrospective of his close friend Pablo Picasso.
I felt fortunate to meet Clergue in New York in 1983, when I conducted this interview, and later in Arles in 1986, when he and his gracious wife introduced us to its many charms. He often came to the United States to photograph and teach, and when I spoke to him in New York he had just returned from leading a workshop in Death Valley. I found him to be a sensitive and generous artist who was unique in his awareness of the issues and themes that concern us all, then as now, both as members of a wider society and as artists.
GS: You seem to be very busy. I saw your book, The Nude Workshop. Is that a particular theme you’ve always pursued?
LC Yes. Have you seen the other parts of my work? I have three major themes: one is landscape, seascape, the ocean; the other is the bullfight and all that goes on around it; and the third is the nude, which makes kind of a triptych and is working quite well. I look to relay a correspondence between life and death, a dialogue. What makes me concerned right now is that many books on my nudes have been published, and people are forgetting that I do other things.
GS They want to put you in a box?
LC It's too bad, but what can I do?
GS Did you begin with the nudes?
LC No, I began with people, circus people, and then I followed up with gypsies, and the first good nudes came in 1956. So the themes I pursue started to show in my early years. Depending on the year, I was doing the nude more than landscape or other themes.
GS Is there any reason that one theme would be pursued more than another in a particular time frame?
LC It depended on the opportunity to find models, or if I was working on a project, like a book, that I had to finish. I'm now doing a book on my country, on Provence, and this is something special. It will be in color. When I’m in the United States, I try to take three or four days shooting for Death Valley and Point Lobos, which I find compelling.
GS Do your themes intermix? Can you see themes within themes?
LC Yes, even in the nude work you can see that there are similar sections, like the sea, the forest, the desert, the urban landscape, and the section on Venice. So that makes a theme within a major theme, which I think is interesting, because you get a good spectrum.
GS So within the theme of the nude, you find that you can express all the themes you’ve been working on.
LC: Oh yes.
GS When you were doing landscapes, were you mostly attracted to your native area in France?
LC Not really. I've been doing a lot at Point Lobos, both in black and white and color. Also, I’ve been working since 1978 in Mexico, in the Yucatan, but I never made anything from that because it’s part of an ambitious project, and I’m not really sure where this project is leading. I have a certain feeling for it, but I still don't know exactly what it is.
GS But you're aware of something brewing?
LC Yes. I have a feeling about something in relationship to natural and human landscape, the works of man. So to mix all this together with work shot in Point Lobos, the Yucatan, India, and wherever is quite complicated, because I have to go from one place to another.
GS Do you see a conflict between the landscape of man and that of nature?
LC Well, this is where I want to see what’s happening. I don’t know—I know there is a relationship, in fact, a conflict. But on the other side, there is something complementary going on. Like in the Yucatan, in Chichen Itza, where you have all the heads of the dead around. And when you see in the forms at Point Lobos the sex of the male and the female. It’s interesting to see how nature creates life and how man celebrates death. This is the type of relationship I would like to express. Also the fact that all that is to celebrate the sun is quite interesting, and perhaps I’ll make my own interpretation of it. As soon as I get the key, I will go faster, because I’ll know where I’m going. But now I don’t know where the door is. For instance, I did a lot of work on the sand, over many years, and I could never really understand my feelings about what I was doing. Point Lobos became the key.
GS What made it the key?
LC It’s logical, always. I was working on a simple basis, which was the sand, what is before, what is after. So, before the sand were the rocks—fine, but not a simple rock. In fact, you have the symbols of life in the rocks at Point Lobos, like the sex of a man, the sex of a woman. There is a kind of luxuriance of sexuality there. It is the idea of nature as very prolific, very dynamic, very alive; and when you photograph, you show the life. And the man appears upon the world (it’s about the middle of the book); you see the footprints of man. Some people, when they see that, see it as a kind of an aggression. “Oh, something wrong will happen here,” they feel, and man is there. And he’s bringing his car and he’s polluting the place, disturbing everything. And in the end he turns the earth into a cadaver; he brings the earth into plastic, and there is no more room for man. That duality between man and nature is quite interesting. And perhaps it’s political, because man has the atom bomb and wants to destroy the world. It’s a difficult road; you don’t know where you’re really going, because you always have two directions, and there is never a distinct indication of which one to follow. You have to make a choice, and hope it is the right one.
GS In the bullfight, you know the end of the story. Isn’t that a kind of “logic”? Do you know the end of your stories?
LC No. And even if I knew the end of the story, I’d try to reverse it, because then it would be like music. For instance, Bach used to change his mind; when you were expecting one note to finish a partition, he’d give you another one. And I think this is interesting; you know, you’re not obliged to do what is expected of you.
GS I’ve talked with other photographers who are involved with music, and they also relayed a feeling about the link between music and photography.
LC Oh, yes. Who?
GS A fellow named Walter Chappell.
LC Where is he now?
GS New Mexico
LC Give him my love and regards, and say that I would like to see him, to print with him. I met him years ago when he was in New York. So the music is part of our life. I’ve been studying the violin since I was eighteen, and when I started in photography, I had the feeling of music behind me. For instance, the languid nature of grasses, marshes; I had the feeling of organization, like in composition. The relationship you have with music is in the partition; in photography, that partition is the negative. And you have the interpretation, which is the positive. If you learn to read a negative as you read music, and learn how to print as you play music, then you realize how close the two forms are.
GS A piece can be played many different ways.
LC Indeed. When you play violin, you have many different positions of the arm. It will be the same note, but will give many different impressions if you play the first, the third, or the fifth position. This is where you need to have a good background and technique, to use this foundation to promote your expressiveness.
GS Different composers will interpret a piece differently. Do you oversee the printing of your pictures?
LC Up until now I did all my printing in black and white myself. For color, I use two different labs, and like to use mostly Cibachrome. I sometimes have prints done with the Fresson process, but I’m not entirely happy with it.
GS What brought you to photography?
LC In the beginning, I enjoyed the work of a photographer who was dealing with the bullfight, and I wanted to do the same type of work he was doing. I had no camera at the time, but I had a neighbor whose hobby was collecting secondhand cameras, and he would give them to me to test before he bought them. I started like that and never stopped.
GS So you wanted to capture something you saw in another photographer’s work?
LC I didn't know exactly where I was going. I knew I didn’t want to do commercial work or publicity. I worked a bit for a local paper, to support myself; I was working in a factory at the time, I tried to do some studio work, but it came out too artificial, too organized. I did some theatre work, and liked that. I kept shooting the bullfight, and all that went with that.
GS In the themes you work with, do you feel there are limitations imposed by photography itself?
LC Sometimes I see technical barriers. With the nude work, there is something of a censorship problem. You can’t do the work because other people are there, or there is a prohibition against it...it can be frustrating. And then there’s another aspect—in Point Lobos, for instance. There you’re not only dealing with nature, but with the fact that many other photographers have been there. You know there are certain shots you can’t do because they’ve been done; this shot is the property of Weston, and so on. I used to stay with Ansel Adams out there, and sometimes I’d come back from a shot and say, “Ansel, I’m really frustrated because I can't understand the messages of God today,” and it was true. I would be there, and I wouldn’t be ready to understand what was happening. This is where we are alone and can’t be supported by anybody.
GS There is reinforcement, though, and that's what keeps it going. Even with the frustration, the moments of connection do occur.
LC Well, it’s part of the game. You have to accept that there is a limit somewhere and sometimes you are not ready for what’s going on.
GS Do you remember any pictures that became particularly important for you—that moved you into another exploration?
LC Since 1959 I’ve been dealing with a pond. I was so happy with it that I came back to it each year during a ten-year period to refresh myself, like touching the black stone. And I think this is good.
GS So there is a connection, a moment within the process of shooting that caused this excitement?
LC Yes, and this sometimes irritates people, because you cannot share this instant. It’s very nice when it’s happening. It’s not a frequent occurrence, but sometimes you immediately have this fabulous feeling, because you are receptive to it all.
GS Is there any way that you gear yourself for receptivity, or is it something that is part of your life now?
LC On one side, we know a lot so we can go much faster; on the other side, we go slowly because we see what we have missed. It’s a strange situation. What you think when you are twenty, when you are thirty, forty, fifty is so different. I am almost in my fifties, and I look back and say, "Oh, I was able to do all this in that amount of time,” but no, I still work. I have to follow what is new and go ahead. I like to provoke myself, to take risks, because that is the way I prosper and get encouragement.
GS So the provocation, is that a form of inspiration for you
LC I like the words of Cocteau, when he says, "Be ready to catch the invisible, who made the terrible mistake to show up.” To do this, you have to have inspiration, but you have to be careful of it also. Stravinsky said, “Inspiration is like babies, you have to put them on the pot every morning.” You don’t just sit down and wait for inspiration to come; it's work, every day, every day. It’s all part of the game.
