Lucien Clergue at Montmajour

A French photographer born in Arles in 1934, Lucien Clergue has devoted his entire life to the art of photography. He has contributed to its dissemination and international influence.

His work is structured by recurring themes such as the exaltation of life and death. The feeling of belonging to the town of Arles and to the Camargue landscape is strongly felt in his work. He also constantly links photography with literature, the arts, cinema and music.

In 1969, he created the Rencontres internationales de la photographie d'Arles with Maurice Rouquette and Michel Tournier. It was the 1^st  festival devoted to photography, and has since become a not-to-be-missed event! In 2007 he became the first photographer to be elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

His photographic work on the ruins of Montmajour was one of his first major series. Comprising 60 images, it was bought by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux in the early 2000s.

As a child, Clergue was fascinated by the abbey. He comes there to picnic with his mother. For him, it was a poetic place par excellence.

In 1955, he chose this place to take his first photographs about death. He was obsessed by the subject and explored it from every angle. For a month, he photographed the abbey cemetery, then the Sainte-Croix chapel. 

What he liked about Montmajour was "the harmony between heaven and earth, with water as a means of communication". He was fascinated by the water in the tombs, the reflection of the sky in the water, and the idea of infinity. This series represents the 1^st part of a trilogy on the cemeteries of Arles (the Alyscamps and the XX^th cemetery of Trinquetaille).

In this work, the artist does not seek to take an archaeological approach to the site. He explained that he was "guided by a call from within" and sought to dig into the tombs with his eyes, as if to see death emerging from the darkness.

In 1958, some of these photographs were shown at the Kodak exhibition in Paris.