I came by a hefty book of Lartigue’s work and walked away absolutely humbled. B/c, you see, he did something few people ever manage, that is, he did something truly authentic. And from what I can tell, he did it with neither chutzpah nor hubris…nope, he just did it.

I repeat: absolutely humbled.

I see all those shoots David Sims does of models jumping across the set, the same ones that Hiro did before him, and Avedon before he…see these and consider Lartigue inventing that sensibility as a 10 year old kid at the beginning of the 20th century, shooting his sister and cousins jumping through the air. It makes implicit the shoulders we stand upon and the rarity unique ideas are.

I want to quote from Avedon’s (an acquaintance of Lartigue’s) afterword to this book, since I wouldn’t pretend to be able to add anything more:

I think Jacques Henri Lartigue is the most deceptively simple and penetrating photographer in the short…embarrassing history of that so-called art. While his predecessors and contemporaries were creating and serving traditions he did what no photographer has done before or since. He photographed his own life. It was as if he knew instinctively and from the very beginning that the real secrets lay in the small things. And it was a kind of wisdom – so much deeper than training and often perverted by it – that he never lost. There is almost no one in this book who isn’t a friend…no moment that wasn’t a private one.

Lartigue never exhibited his pictures until 1962. He never thought of himself as a photographer. It was just something he did every day…ever day for seventy years. Out of love of it. And every day his eye refined and his skill with a camera grew. He was an amateur…never burdened by ambition or the need to be a serious person.

But it would be a great mistake to credit his artistry merely to the fact that he was not corrupted by professionalism. Or to say that his work was the product of accident..that his photographs are extraordinary because the people around him were. Or the time in which he lived. Hundreds of children with similar backgrounds were given cameras in those days – but they never became Lartigues. And accidents aren’t capricious. They just don’t happen that often. They can’t produce a single body of work so consistently brilliant. Lartigue is not a reporter and his best photographs are not those gained by chance.

From the earliest possible age Lartigue kept a little diary. At the top of each page there was always a little drawing of the sun or a cloud…and some initials: T.B., B., T.T.B. They stood for Trés beau. Beau. Trés trés beau… That was the weather. It was always a good day. It almost never rained. Ever… And then there would be a quick description of what he did that day. Who visited the house. Where they went… And half the page devoted to drawings of what he’d photographed, because developing was a very risky process and often the pictures didn’t come out. So, afraid that he might never see the pictures that he’d taken, he would draw from memory what he’d photographed. And in the diaries, which went on for many years, you can see the photographs that have since become masterpieces…drawn. And the miracle of these little drawings is that he had captured exactly the way a scarf had been caught by the wind the moment he clicked the shutter. And they’re accurate. Absolutely accurate. Which means a perfect memory…and a complete sense of what he wanted. And this obsessiveness went on every year of his life. The files. The scrapbooks. They’re all over the apartment. The perfection of those files. In a second, he can find any glass negative…1911- neatly kept in perfect condition.

–Richard Avedon. Paris. February 15, 1970. (From afterword to Diary of a Century: Jacques Henri Lartigue. New York: Viking Press, 1970.)

Avedon continues, but I don’t want to belabor it any more than I already have. The point is, I think that in Lartigue’s work and in what Avedon writes of Lartigue, there is a great deal for anyone to learn, and not so much about taking photographs but more simply (or maybe more complexly) about living life.

photo: Sala Au rocher de la vierge. Août 1927. Biarritz. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

photo: Zissou, Rouzat. 1911. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

photo: My cousin Simone. 1913. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

photo: Zissou’s bobsled with wheels, after the bend by the gate, Rouzat, August 1908. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

Then of course there is Lartigue’s most famous photo that I’ve posted before while discussing Irving Penn’s refined compositions, here.

And finally, fittingly, a picture of Lartigue and Avedon together. Such a lovely picture, you can see the pairs genuine kinship with one another, Lartigue’s hand on Avedon’s shoulder as the young Avedon goofs, possibly in a gesture expressing his opinion on the immensity of Lartigue’s mind and creativity.

photo: Richard Avedon and Jacques Henri Lartigue, New York, November 1966 (photograph taken by Florette, Lartigue’s wife).