Legacy: Lucien Clergue

Legacy: Lucien Clergue

At the age of nineteen, he managed to meet Pablo Picasso and show his work. Leaving the Arles bullfighting arena, Lucien Clergue summoned his courage and approached the then 62-year-old Pablo Picasso to show him his photographs.  Clergue worked for the next two years to prepare a portfolio to impress the master.  His photos of Provence and postwar ruins led to a five hour conversation with Picasso in Cannes in 1955 when Picasso promised to design a cover for Clergue’s first book as well as a poster for his first exhibition.  While the poster was too provocative for the organizers to use, this meeting resulted in a lifelong friendship until Picasso’s death.

read more

Graciela Iturbide: 50 Years of Photography

The eldest of 13 children born in 1942 in Mexico City to a traditional Mexican family, Graciela Iturbide got her first camera at age 11, inspired by the photographs her father had taken. Iturbide had not begun as a still photographer.  She had originally enrolled in film school at the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónama de México but was drawn to still photography when she met Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who was teaching there.  He became her mentor and she assisted him on a number of photographic shoots throughout Mexico. Iturbide was viewed as the natural successor to Manuel Alvarez Bravo. It was Bravo who told her, “There is always time for the pictures you want.” His work influenced her until his death at age 100 in 2002.

read more