At the end of the Second World War, Lucien Hervé « born in Hungary Laslo Elkan » 'kept the name he used as a resistance fighter, in 1947 he returned to photography. Two years later, thanks to Père Couturier, director of the magazine Art Sacré, he spent a day taking pictures of the “Cité Radieuse” under construction in Marseille. He took 650 pictures a small selection of which was sent to the architect Le Corbusier. This was the beginning of a long collaboration that ended with the death of the architect almost twenty years latter.

To archive and present his work, Lucien Hervé cut his contact sheets and reassembled them onto index cards. A system that intrigued the architect who systematically requested a copy to keep in his office , and help him select the prints he needed.

The Le Corbusier Foundation has approximately 1200 well kept sheets whereas the photographer’s copies, a daily work tool, are often damaged or torn.

The Foundation Sheets were used for "Le Corbusier / Lucien Hervé Contacts" published by Seuil. As for the Camera Obscura Gallery who has exhibited the photographer’s work several times since 1993, it is showing until February 25 a selection of original contact sheets with approximately 90 archival and modern prints. The exhibition, focused almost entirely on the work with “Corbu”, also shows Hervé’s work in humanistic photography.

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Lucien Hervé
Contacts
13 January -25 February 2012