Lucien Herve

Two previously unpublished photobooks by the great architectural photographer Lucien Hervé, slipcased with an overview of his life and work

In 1958, the Hungarian photographer Lucien Hervé (1920–2007) received a commission from a publishing house in Barcelona to make a photobook on the monastery of El Escorial. During a trip to Spain in 1959, this first project was extended to a second commission to photograph Mediterranean vernacular architecture. For various reasons, neither book was ever published, although both projects were continuously revised by the photographer throughout his life. In them he applied the methodological and conceptual patterns that defined his habitual way of seeing and operating, also found in his collaborations with Le Corbusier.

Sixty years later, following the spirit of Herve´s archival documentation, both unpublished works are finally seeing the light of day in this three-volume edition that also includes an overview of his life and work.