Archive for August, 2010

I’ve noticed, on the internet especially, that there’s a general feeling of imitation in portrait photography. As a result, everything looks the same. I’ve given a lot of thought as to what it means to be a “photographer”, and how one photographer can break out of the sea of “sameness”. One way is to study the masters of photography. Those who broke out, who were pioneers, geniuses, even. We all want to become great photographers. How can we if we don’t know the masters who came before us?

In the turn of the century, Paris was the global center for painting, film and photography. It was the Belle Epoque…the “Beautiful Era”. It was a time of many firsts, in technology, fashion, art, … it was a glorious age. In 1894, Jacques Henri Lartigue was born into one of the wealthiest, most eccentric families in Paris. They did whatever they liked. Always testing out the newest inventions, and inventing their own contraptions.

Lartigue may be known as the greatest amateur photographer of all time. As I have studied him and explored his work, I don’t feel he was an amateur at all. He was quite technical and very detailed. I’m sure many children were given cameras in the 1900′s. Yet none of them has captured life in the turn of the century and produced a brilliant, consistent body of work as Lartigue has. He photographed things and people that he loved, things that interested him. As a sort of scrapbook. He photographed only for himself. It’s because of this we feel an intimacy and honesty in his photographs. What’s fascinating is that he captured all of this at a time of incredible change and invention in the world. Because of his affluent and social family, he kept company with extraordinary artists, including Matisse, Cocteau and Picasso.

As Lartigue progressed, so did the world. And Lartigues father made sure Jacques had a front row seat at the best and greatest events – the first manned flights in France, the Grand Prix championships. With his camera, of course.

Lartigue was given a camera by his father at the age of 7, which was taller and heavier than he was. He kept a detailed diary of his photographs, frame by frame. He wrote about who visited, what they did, and included sketches of each frame he took in detail, even down to the way a scarf blew in the wind. He did this because the development of film was risky, and the prints often didn’t turn out.

Lartigue’s images originate from the optimism and innocence of a child, where every day’s weather was always recorded as “beau” or “tres beau”. It was always a beautiful day.

And so we have an astounding collection of little bits of time. Captured moments. A world of images. In his body of work, there are uncles having pillow fights, a cousin leaping off a grand staircase, a wife posing for a honeymoon portrait on a toilet, women smothered in the latest fashions, feathers and hats, a brother sitting on a broken down homemade bobsleigh, children standing eerily in garish halloween masks, the first flight of a brother in a homemade glider, a cousin leaping into a pond at an impossible angle…and on and on.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
My Hydroglider with Propeller
1904 (age 10)

Photograph by J H Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture – France / AAJHL
http://www.lartigue.org

Image courtesy of Masters of Photography

“I used to ask Papa: ‘Please make a photo of that… and that…and that…’ He always said: ‘Yes, yes…’ but he never did. Well, now I can do it myself. And I know very well that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken and I will take them all.” – Lartigue, age 7

Lartigue’s childhood was riddled with illness. Bedridden, he spent many hours alone while his family went out on adventures. He became tortured by the passing of time. Life was happening and he was missing it. It is this experience that may have developed his curiosity and intense observational skills. He would spend a lifetime trying to capture moments in time so that he could live inside them. When the camera his father had given him broke down, he invented what he called the “eye-trap”, where he creates a camera inside of himself:

“All of a sudden, I had a remarkable idea! An invention out of a fairytale! This is how my invention works; I open my eyes, close them, open them very very wide…and HOP! I have captured the image. Like a camera, I catch the picture with everything in it. The colors, the real size. What I keep in my mind is something alive; and it moves and smells.” – Lartigue, age 8

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris
1911 (age 17)

Photograph by J H Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture – France / AAJHL
http://www.lartigue.org

Image courtesy of Masters of Photography

As Lartigue grew, so did his fascination with women. He would sit on a bench on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, where fashionable, sometimes famous women would meet to show off their dresses and hats. The above photo is one such image. Lartigue explains,

“The Bois de Boulogne. Every day pretty women displayed their dresses. And every day at lunch time, after school, I rushed to see them. I was fascinated by fashion…their hats… I just liked seeing pretty women. Sitting on a chair, I saw them coming. I thought this one is pretty…I got up…’click’! My camera was very noisy. When they were alone, they smiled. Their gentlemen were usually furious. I didn’t care. I was young. What counted was I had my photo. Every time you met somebody, you raised your hat. This went on every morning of the week. To meet each other and show their dresses and their hats. They needed high carriages. They didn’t fit in ordinary cars. One lady asked me to bring it [the photograph] to her but I was shy and panicked. She was a famous dancer, Regine Abaded. I was only 17 years old. So I sent my brother.”

Lartigue took this photo for himself, as he took all his images, because she was beautiful and he wanted to capture her. But to the outside viewer, it shows a fascinating time where new technologies and inventions are literally driving away the past, where we have the car, representing the new century chasing the horse drawn carriage of the past.

“That’s why I take photographs. To live on through one’s pictures… to try at least.”

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Car Trip, Papa at 80 kilometers an hour
1913

Photograph by J H Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture – France / AAJHL
http://www.lartigue.org

Image courtesy of Masters of Photography

One of the greatest photographs. Period. Many experts are baffled how Lartigue was able to produce this photograph with the camera and the speed of the lens he was using. Some have tried to reproduce this effect using the same camera, and have failed. There are three things that invoke a strong sense of motion here; first the angle of distortion of the men standing on the left; second, the cartoonish distortion of the wheel, implying speed; and last that the entire front of the car is moving so fast it’s actually out of the frame.

How he did it: Lartigue used a large camera, which he panned to follow the car. The focal plane shutter of the camera moved from bottom to top (for techies: it’s really top to bottom, but the camera records the image upside down). The shutter is slower than both the panning action and the car. As Lartigue moves the camera to the right, while the car is moving to the right even faster, we see different moments in time projected on different parts of the film, thus producing the distortion.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Zissou, Rouzat
1911

Photograph by J H Lartigue

© Ministère de la Culture – France / AAJHL
http://www.lartigue.org

Image courtesy of Masters of Photography

“Zissou has discovered a kind of boat, a tire-boat we call it. You slide your legs into a pair of waders sealed to the bottom of the hull and ‘walk’ through the water. Of course I had to take a photograph of him the first time he tried it; immaculately dressed, with the same serious expression on his face as always.” Lartigue, age 12

A chance meeting with a photo agent landed him a spread in Life Magazine, in the same issue which commemorated the death of John Kennedy, ensuring the widest possible audience for his pictures. In 1963 at the age of 69, he was given his first show at MoMA in New York.

What I learned from Lartigue is to value the smallness. The details that make our life what it is. And also to photograph for yourself alone, because that is the way to true art.

Additional info:

Diary of a Century – Jacques Henri Lartigue

Chronology of Lartigue’s work

Video: Jacque Henri Lartigue – The Boy Who Never Grew Up

Video: Interview with Lartigue