In July 1970, the Festival d’Arles opened the first Rencontres Photographiques under the leadership of Lucien Clergue, Jean- Maurice Rouquette and Michel Tournier with “An Homage to Weston“, a show of 36 prints by Edward Weston, whose photographs were then very rare in France. To mark the festival’s 50th anniversary, we are recreating the Weston show as it was presented in 1970. At the same time, we wanted to celebrate the festival’s founder, photographer and curator Lucien Clergue. Weston seems like a tutelary figure who guided Clergue’s first steps as a photographer, as his notebooks, most dating from the 1950s and unknown until now, attest. We have brought them together for this show. Reuniting them for this anniversary is a way of recognizing that the history of photography is written in successive strata. Clergue’s fossilized carrion singularly respond to Weston’s anthropomorphic works.