Lucien Clergue (1934 – 2014) was born in Arles, France. In 1949, he learned the basics of photography. Four years later, at a bullfight in Arles, he met the greatest at that time living artist of the world, Pablo Picasso, and showed him his photographs. Picasso got interested and asked to see more of his work. Later, Picasso defended Clergue’s work against prudish French critique particularly concerning his extraordinary nude photography and declared his photographs as great art. Over time, Clergue and Picasso became friends. Their friendship lasted nearly 30 years until Picasso's death. Clergue's autobiographical book “Picasso My Friend” looks back on important moments of that relationship. In addition to his stunning nude photography, Clergue worked on a series of photographs about gypsies, travelling entertainers, acrobats and harlequins, the “Saltimbanques”. In 1968, Clergue became co-founder of the “Recontres d’Arles Photography Festival” which is annually held since then in Arles, and where he regularly exhibited his work.

Clergue's photographs are in the collections of numerous well-known museums and private collectors. His photographs have been exhibited in over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide, with extraordinary exhibitions such as at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1961. Museums with large collections of his work include the Fogg Museum at Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His work “Fontaines du Grand Palais” is exhibited in Museo Cantonale d’Arte in Lugano. His photographs of the great deep sea explorer Jean Cocteau are on permanent display at the Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton, France.

In 2007, the city of Arles honored Lucien Clergue and dedicated a retrospective collection of 360 of his photographs dating from 1953 to 2007. He received the Lucie Award in 2007, and was named Knight of the “Legion d’Honneur” in 2003.  In 2006, he became an elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts of France, where a new section dedicated to art photography has been established influenced by his outstanding photographic work. Clergue was the first photographer to enter that academy and was even its chairman in 2013.