Pixiq

See the kid in the photo? That’s Jacques-Henri Lartigue when he was eight years old. He’s holding the glass plate camera his father had just given him. Over the next few years, this little kid and that camera would produce a gigantic photographic record of the joy and wonder of family life--images that you or I, or any photographer would be proud to have taken. 

The story of Lartigue is a fascinating one. For most of his life Jacques-Henri didn’t think of himself as a serious photographer. He kept his amazing photographs in family albums on the bookshelves of his Paris apartment and he’d only occasionally show them to friends. 

Born in 1894, the second son of wealthy parents, Jacques-Henri grew up in a family whose money paid for its fun and toys. Latrigue’s father raced cars, built gliders, and taught his son photography and processing when the boy was just six. Jacques-Henri’s enthusiasm for picture taking led his father to buy him his first camera when we was eight. It was the glass plate negative camera Jacques is holding in the photo. 

Jacques-Henri’s photographs of his family were mostly taken when he was between the ages of eight and twelve. They capture the family’s “joie de la vie”—a sense of love of life. It was the Belle Époque, when people believed that, as a  famous actress of the day put it, “Frivolity is the safeguard and the promise of happiness.” 

Lartigue’s family was frivolous and exuberant. They lived large and played hard. Look at Lartigue’s images in the Gallery and you will see a record of a family taking delight in life and having fun. They revel in the new inventions of the day. This was the old world becoming the modern one. Edison had invented the electric light and the Lumière brothers were making silent movies, Dodge and Benz were building cars, and radio, the razor blade, vacuum cleaner, ice cream cone, vitamins and aspirin had just arrived on the scene.   

And through it all, Jacques-Henri Lartigue was there taking hundreds of photos of this evolving modern world. He recorded early attempts at flight. His father and brother constructed giant kites to test aerodynamic theories and went on to build and fly gliders. Jacques-Henri documented these experiments with wood and silk airplanes, and camera in hand went with his father and brother to see the efforts of other French aviators to fly. 

His family was an active one seemingly always at play. They raced wheeled "bobsleds," invented machines for animal racing, played at sports and even tried climbing the Eiffel Tower. Jacques-Henri's father raced cars in major automobile races across France such as the Coupe Gordon Bennett and the French Grand Prix. And Jacques' camera was always there. 

Later, as a teenager, Lartigue sold a few pictures to sporting magazines but decided to become a painter rather than a photographer. Luckily, he continued photographing his life, including his three marriages, his many mistresses and his very famous friends.  

Over the years, Lartigue would show his photo albums to friends but it wasn’t until 1963, when he was 69, that they were seen by John Szarkowski, then curator of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Szarkowski recognized Lartigue’s genius and arranged an exhibition of his work at the museum. 

With that exhibition the world took notice of Lartigue’s photography. Soon he began to get photo assignments from magazines and exhibitions of his images the world. His fame brought him the opportunity to work on movies sets where he met and photographed filmmakers Jacques Feyder, Abel Gance, Robert Bresson, François Truffaut and Frederico Fellini. 

In 2003, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris had a huge Lartigue retrospective show. The exhibition, “l’album d’une vie” filled several large rooms and was a revelation. Although Jacques is holding a large wooden box camera in the lead photo, he took photos in many different formats; from a variety glass plate negatives sizes to 2 ¼ medium format film and 35mm. He also experimented, between 1912 and 1927, with the newly introduced “autochrome” color process. 

Images like the one of cousin Biconade flying down the staircase were taken with a stereo camera. I had seen them as large flat, printed images but at the Pompidou they were presented as stereo pairs and viewed with special glasses. Suddenly in 3-D, cousins Biconade and Jean were revealed in all of their glorious mid-air aerobatics. 

For me, these early boyhood photos, full of energy and enthusiasm are the ones of JHl’s I like the best. Jacques family was wealthy but unlike today’s wealthy—or for that matter many of us-- they embraced exuberance and frivolity, and devoted themselves to fun and pleasure. 

In all, Jacques-Henri Lartigue produced nearly 120 photo albums, probably the most complete autobiographical records of a life and a family ever made. The photos in the Gallery are a terribly small selection of his work. Most of them are from a book of Lartigue photographs called “Boyhood Photos.” Printed in 1966, it is a unique publication. The photos are not printed on the pages, but pasted in by hand as though this book was an actual family album. 

I keep “Boyhood Photos” on my bookshelf and sometimes when I feel a bit low I look through it. These images remind me of the frivolity and joy, the warmth and silliness of family. Recording it is the one of most important thing any photographer can do.