The photographer Lucien Clergue, who has died aged 80, was on first-name terms with death. It was everywhere: in the sand and stones that he photographed for his ongoing series Language of the Sands, begun in the 1970s; in the arena spattered with the blood of fierce bulls and brave matadors; in the ancient graves carved in the rock at Montmajour Abbey; and in the ruins of his native town, Arles, in southern France. Even his images of sturdy nude bodies in the waves (a series he began in the 1950s and continued until his death) served as a reminder that youth and life will end.
On a shoot in his beloved Camargue region, I remember him saying (pointing to the arid landscape of sea and sand): “Look, I am photographing my tomb!” This persistent melancholy can be explained by the circumstances of Clergue’s childhood: his modest background, his parents’ separation in his infancy, an ailing mother, and the bombing of Arles towards the end of the second world war.
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