Lucien Clergue-Poesie Photographique (English, French and German Edition) - Softcover

9783791328508: Lucien Clergue-Poesie Photographique (English, French and German Edition)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3791328506 ISBN 13: 9783791328508

Publisher: Prestel Pub, 2005

This photographic retrospective of the renowned contemporary photographer includes—and looks beyond—his famous Picasso portraits and sumptuous nudes to explore the lifelong obsessions and passions of a brilliant artist.

This collection of almost one hundred and fifty images traces the dynamic continuum that is Clergue’s career: from the mysterious gypsies of his childhood, and his friendships with Picasso, Cocteau and other avant-garde personalities, to breathtaking images of sea and sand, riveting nudes, and searing portraits. Together these images, some of them never published before, create a showcase of Clergue’s decades-long fascination with life, death, and the "mysterious in between." This volume also includes a biography that highlights Clergue’s accomplishments as an artist, an essay on his ventures into surrealism, and a series of correspondence between Clergue and Jean Cocteau.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Clergue (b. 1934) was a key figure in the mid-twentieth-century endgame argument over the artistic status of photography. Raised to have and pursue artistic inclinations, he took up photography in adolescence but had no photojournalistic or studio ambitions. He created the pictures he photographed, visually selecting and ordering materials (the objects in the photo) like a modernist artist. At age 18 he showed his work to Picasso, making a connection that would lead, eventually, to his vaulting from avocational to professional art-making photographer without benefit of newspaper or client-based work in between. Another crucial early patron was Jean Cocteau, and it is hard not to see Cocteau's as well as Picasso's--indeed, all of modernist art's--strong interest in calligraphy and hieroglyphics in much of Clergue's imagery, especially his pictures of dead animals in sand, of grasses and partial nudes in water, and of cracks; he is drawn to find and tease out the traces of "writing"--that is, the sign of intelligent notice, other than the photographer's--in the most natural and spontaneous things. Editor Turck's introductory essay on him here is never even slightly off the mark in its citations of what to look for in the 59 plates representing Clergue's many projects that are the all-too-slender heart of this enrapturing book (seven portraits of friends and various informal photos of Clergue also appear). Ray Olson
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review:

"150 photographs are well worth the price. But the accompanying text... is what really makes this book special." -- Michelle7, June 2004

"An intriguing and important catalog of his entire skills set." -- Library Bookwatch, August 2004

"This wonderful overview of the work of one of photography’s masters is, as the title implies, poetry." -- Black and White, July 2004

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.