Lartigue

Jacques-Henry (1894-1986). French photographer. Born to a well-off family, he received the first of his numberless cameras at the age of 6. He very soon started “collecting” the most important moments of his youth in photographs: beautiful women at the Bois de Boulogne, the first planes, his father’s car, racing cars, his childhood games, etc. Fascinated by speed, he photographed sport events using cameras with fast shutter speeds and filled large albums with his pictures. Jacques-Henry was also a professional painter who studied at the Julian Academy, painted still-lifes and sports events, presenting his work in solo exhibitions. He dedicated himself to photography with the passion of a beginner, and his work was exhibited at the Galerie d’Orsay in Paris next to photographers like Brassai, Man Ray, and Doisneau. A very religious man, he sold his pictures to Catholic magazines, while continuing to take beautiful fashion photos that remained unknown for years. During a trip to New York, he showed his photos to John Szakowski, director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, who recognized Lartigue’s genius and immediately organized a large solo exhibition. At the age of almost 70, Lartigue was discovered as the great photographer he always had been. To mark this exhibition, Life dedicated him a 10-page spread. The issue received wide circulation because it was published immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy. From that time one he published books, the first being: The Photographs of J-H Lartigue: A Family Album of the Belle Époque (1966), Diary of a Century (1970) with Richard Avedon, and Lartigue and Women (1973). He was given solo exhibitions all over the world and in 1974 took the official portrait of the President of the French Republic, Valérie Giscard d’Estaing. In the 1980s he devoted himself to fashion photography, though either with a strong sense of irony, as seen in his pictures taken at Versailles, or with that elegant taste seen in his autochromes of the 1920s and seen again, 60 years later, in his sensual portraits of contemporary women in the Bois de Boulogne. It might be said that Lartigue always shot his models as if he were photographing a fashion reportage. This is supported by the fact that Cecil Beaton designed the costumes of the film My Fair Lady after drawing inspiration from one of Lartgue’s photographs without even having met him. The archive the photographer donated to France in 1979 is managed by the Association des Amis de Lartigue of Paris.