Publisher: Le Renard Pale (Patricia Dupuy), France
Publication Date: 2006-2007; this copy signed in early 2007
Category: Artist's book,complete in 3 volumes with slipcase
Format: Loose-leaf in wrappers,housed in a red silk slipcase finished with black lace
Materials:Rives paper and Poussiere de lune paper
Contents: Complete set with 8 unpublished "erotico-toraumachiques" poems by Claude Viallat and 8 photographs by Lucien Clergue, including 3 colour Ilfochrome images
Volume Details:
TorEros 1: 3 poems with 3 black-and-white photographs
TorEros 2: 2 poems with 2 black-and-white photographs
TorEros 3: 3 poems with 3 colour Ilfochrome photographs
Printing Details: Black-and-white prints were produced by Kathy Cooper in the photographer's darkroom in Arles; the 3 colour works in TorEros 3 are original Ilfochrome prints made in Paris
Edition: Edition of 35 copies, this copy numbered 11/35
Signature: Signed by both the poet and the photographer
TorEros is a limited-edition artist's book created by Lucien Clergue and Claude Viallat around the intertwined themes of bullfighting, the body, and desire. Issued in three volumes, the complete set brings together 8 unpublished poems by Viallat and 8 photographs by Clergue made between 1962 and 2001, with the final volume including 3 colour Ilfochrome works. Through the alternating rhythm of poem and image, the project stages the violence, sensuality, ritual, and mystery of tauromachy. The red silk slipcase and black lace binding further heighten the work's theatrical and tactile presence. As a collaborative publication by two major French artists, TorEros holds notable literary, photographic, and bibliophilic value. Note: "TorEros" is a neologism coined by the author, combining the meanings of bullfighting and Eros (desire/love).
Lucien Clergue (1934-2014) was one of the major French photographers of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Arles, he remained deeply connected throughout his life to both the city and the landscape of the Camargue. His work spans nudes, beach nudes, bullfighting, Mediterranean landscapes, portraits of artists, and artist's books, and is especially noted for transforming the body, the shoreline, light, and curvature into a highly formal and poetic black-and-white language. In 1955, he met Pablo Picasso and developed a lasting friendship with him; he also maintained close ties with literature, music, theatre, and the visual arts, which gave his photography a distinctly interdisciplinary character.

In 1970, Clergue worked with Michel Tournier and Jean-Maurice Rouquette to launch the Rencontres d'Arles, helping turn Arles into one of the world's major centers of photographic culture. In 2006, he entered the photography section of the Academie des Beaux-Arts, becoming the first photographer elected to that dedicated seat, and in 2013 he served as President of the Academie. As an artist, publisher, and cultural advocate, Clergue not only shaped a major strand of postwar French art photography through his own images, but also left a lasting mark on the history of photography in Arles and in Europe more broadly.
Claude Viallat (b. 1936) is a French contemporary artist born in Nimes, where he continues to live and work. He is one of the founders of the Supports/Surfaces movement, and is known for challenging the conventions of painting by abandoning the traditional stretcher and repeatedly applying the same abstract motif across varied supports. He is regarded as a major figure in postwar French abstraction.