Jacques-Henri Lartigue, liberating moments

Gerda at Hendaye, 1937

Bichonnade leaping, 1905 (taken when Lartigue was 11)

Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, 1911

Zissou (Lartigue's brother), 1911

Zissou in his ZYX 24, 1910

Renee with driving goggles, 1930-31

Lartigue's first wife Bibi at Marseilles, 1928. It looks like she's on her mobile.

my cat Zizi, June, 1904

Above, below and bottom, the exquisite Renee Perle, Lartigue's Romanian muse/girlfriend

Sala, Biarritz, August, 1918

Suzy Vernon, 1926

Reneé, Eden Roc, August, 1931

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894–1986) was born near Paris into a wealthy and cultured family—the younger of two sons of a financier. He began taking photographs in 1901 at age 7 when his father gave him his own camera— a less than child-friendly 13 x 18" affair on a wooden tripod. "I know very well that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken," JH wrote in his journal at the time, "and I will take them all!"

For years his subject matter was his own life and the almost impossibly gilded and giddy activities in it. He photographed his friends and family leaping, tumbling, and careering on soapbox racers, he documented automobile races, the beach, flying machines, and devastatingly elegant women. He was able to effortlessly seize a moment— capture liberation.

World War One, the Russian Revolution, the Nazi occupation of France, and so on), yet he does not focus on such conflicts. On the contrary; he seeks to portray innocence, spontaneity and the joy of being alive.

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World War One, the Russian Revolution, the Nazi occupation of France, and so on), yet he does not focus on such conflicts. On the contrary; he seeks to portray innocence, spontaneity and the joy of being alive.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=45484#.UCEbVERXtuU[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

Lartigue did not serve in World War I— he was in art school for painting at the time— and he never had to sell or exhibit any of his work to make a living. He was photographing at a time of social and political shattering: world war, Russian revolution, rise of Nazism -yet his images exist in another plane altogether: luminous, fleeting, buoyant, "madcap." One could conceivably find him, and his world, insufferable, hermetically removed and frivolous but somehow I dont feel that at all. He was self-taught, a skilled hobbyist actually. He photographed 'what he loved at that moment' and in that way he was an amateur in the truest sense.//
Lartigue was virtually unknown professionally, or in the US at all, until 1963, when he was already 69 years old. With an exhibition at MOMA and article in Life magazine that year came a flood of books, commissions and recognition...by then visual sensibility had caught up with Lartigue's photography.//

The director Wes Anderson is a fan and has incorporated a note of Lartigue fantasy, as well as actual Lartigue photos, in his films.