"Nude at White Sands"

LVI

gelatin silver print

signed (ink) on recto; titled, dated and numbered (ink) on verso; note: "ref 86030/24a"

The photograph was taken in White Sands, New Mexico, a nature reserve in the Chihuahua Desert, where French photographer Lucien Clergue first took pictures in the early 1980s. The white sand certainly fascinated him as a backdrop for his pictures, and Clergue visited this place several times. The white sand dunes provided the perfect backdrop for playing with textures, shadows, and the human figure, similar to his earlier work from the Camargue in his homeland. The connection between body and landscape, which is often seen in his photographs, is particularly evident here. A series of color nude photographs with white sand and blue sky, also taken in White Sands, is well known.
With the striking shadow structure of the desert plant, Clergue anticipates in this photograph something that he only began to use deliberately in his Zebra Nudes from 1997 onwards. The shadow of the hand also deserves our attention here.
(Christoph Fuchs, translated by deepL)