Lartigue
Here's something more life-affirming at last! Look down the page at our recent subject matter: war, poverty, drugs, painful injuries, shame on us. A favourite photograph of mine, this: Jacques Henri Lartigue's photo 'Hydroglider' from 1904 - tho I prefer the alternative title 'My Hydroglider With Propeller' (that's him in the bath!) It's always a dangerous thing to think of photography as an artform: if you're not careful you get Margaret Cameronesque whimsy (remember that desperately earnest exhibition at the Whitechapel, James, that bored the pants off us but at least got us wondering when was the moment people started smiling at the camera, because none of them were then); or too much stylish precision a la Man Ray / Edward Weston; or the spot-the-art-history-references-worthiness of Jeff Wall. So hooray for flickr and 'what's in your fridge?' pictures, and hooray for JHL who becomes an amateur at seven and stays that way...
check out official French site http://www.lartigue.org. The photo of the dirigible at Ville de Paris, 1907 is great too.
posted by col at 10:19 pm
3 Comments:
Beautiful photos. I think some of the early portrait shots are superb. Can't wait to look at the later years when I get a minute...
Who would be his contemporaries and by whom was he influenced? Or does it say that on the website and I have been too much in a hurry to check...?
Arghh - defeated by over-complex web design! After lots of clicking, all I could get was a shockwave slide show. Some top photos (especially the one of his brother defying gravity), but I guess I must be missing something. I can't find the dirigible photo anywhere!!
thant's really odd: theyve taken it down (I hope it wasnt me!). you can still see it if you go to the chronology section and scroll laterally to 1907
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