Lartigue - Martine d'Astier

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) took his first photograph using his father's camera when he was six years old, and with this began the creation of an enduring record of twentieth-century French life. Lartigue arranged the several thousands of photographs he took into large albums, which he donated to the French State some years before he died, creating the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue. The gift included 130 albums (beginning with the 1880 family album and ending with the album created just before his death in 1986), every print and negative he ever produced, and his handwritten diary. This sumptuous volume draws on this marvellous legacy to present the most comprehensive overview of Lartigue's work ever published. Facsimile pages from the albums are accompanied by six essays, all written by experts on Lartigue's oeuvre. The authors analyse and assess the photographer's view of the relationship between photography, painting and writing, and his belief in the need to preserve both mundane and spectacular moments on film. They trace Lartigue's rise to fame and the many technological innovations of photography during his lifetime. Like the albums themselves, this book offers up i