L’Unité d’habitation à Nantes-Rezé

Hungarian photographer Lucien Hervé was born László Elkán. He studied design at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Vienna and then moved to Paris. Drafted into the army in 1939, he was captured the following year at Dunkirk, but he eventually escaped, ending up in Grenoble, where he took his new name as a member of the French Resistance. Hervé is best known for his extensive photographic work with the Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, also known as Le Corbusier. His black-and-white photographic compositions were bold and graphic, nearing abstraction at times, and resonated with Le Corbusier’s sense of geometry and modernity. Prior to his photographic career, Hervé worked in a series of creative capacities, including fashion design and art journalism.