Lucien Hervé
Regarded as one of the greats of twentieth century architectural photography, Hungarian-born French photographer (b. 1910), Lucien Hervé captured the story of the built environment. Renowned for his black and white compositions, which elevated to use of shadow and structure to the point of complete abstraction. Hervé was able to capture a sense of wonder and curiosity, by finding details within massive forms, he turned to unapproachable to the desirable.
When approaching his work I realised to achieve a replica I would have to give a sense of abstraction from the most banal spaces. Based on this I chose to embody the ethos of ‘A series of seemingly banal and quotidian spaces that have some common abstract quality’. I believe this approach best encompassed Hervé works, which whilst relay of shadow are fundamentally about finding to abstract in the mundane.
I chose to photograph around both my college and Macquarie uni, both areas feature heavy brutalist style architecture and best emulated the spaces captured in Hervé works. When analysing his work, I found three distinct aspects to focus on in my own works, structure, light and shadow. With these three principles I believe my final works encompass the very fundamental nature of Hervé.
For some of the works I experiment with inverting the colours, whilst not traditionally a tool used by Hervé, it remains that inverting the colours to highlight the fundamentally ideals of light, shadow and structure, elevates the overall photo. In reflection I believe I was very successful in capturing Hervé style of photography.
