View Full Version : Discuss a Jacques-Henri Lartigue Photograph
(sorry, I have no way to host this now, so click below)
Sure, it is probably a cliche to say you like this photograph, but it is one of my most favorite images of all times.
The photograph screams speed and the distortion of space by velocity. For that alone, I find it... wonderful.
Not the greatest critique in the World.
"Car Trip, Papa at 80 kilometers an hour" (1913)
"Scan courtesy of Masters of Photography (http://www.masters-of-photography.com/) "
Bill Mitchell
08-13-2006, 10:47 PM
IMO one of the 10 greatest photographs ever made. According to what he later told St. Ansel, Lartigue, (who was still in his teens when me made it), know the result he would get by panning his camera as its vertical focal-plane shutter descended across the film plane. Thus, everything from the oval wheels to the leaning spectators was intentional. I don't believe that anyone else has ever done anything like it (although, of course, all racing cars photographed at speed with a Graflex or Zeiss Contax have oval wheels).
tim atherton
08-13-2006, 10:50 PM
I love that he took this when he wa sonly 16 or 17 and that his best and most influential photographs comes from the years he was still just a "youth"
Sparky
08-13-2006, 11:16 PM
It's one of the few really superb examples in the medium of the confluence between technology and aesthetic...!
(i.e. - an early focal plane shutter creating a distortion that really makes for a communicative and transcendent image)
David H. Bebbington
08-13-2006, 11:17 PM
Lartigue is a unique figure in photography. He came from a well-to-do family, all of whose members seemed to have been obsessed with technology, he himself seem to have had an intuitive understanding of how a camera worked (as Bill Mitchell mentions), and he took to photography like a duck to water but without having his imagination cramped in any way by any ideas of the "right" way to take "proper" photographs. The results I think have an undiluted enthusiasm and energy and a strength of personal vision which I really can't recall seeing anywhere else.
Here is a link to another photo of his that knocks my socks off; it so evokes the "desperate fun" of wealthy Pre WWII Europe (at least as I interpet it), it is shocking... (click on photo #2 "Renee - Paris to Aix-les-Bains", 1931) (http://www.staleywise.com/collection/lartigue/lartigue.html#)
Jim Chinn
08-13-2006, 11:51 PM
Lartigue is a unique figure in photography. He came from a well-to-do family, all of whose members seemed to have been obsessed with technology, he himself seem to have had an intuitive understanding of how a camera worked (as Bill Mitchell mentions), and he took to photography like a duck to water but without having his imagination cramped in any way by any ideas of the "right" way to take "proper" photographs. The results I think have an undiluted enthusiasm and energy and a strength of personal vision which I really can't recall seeing anywhere else.
Your post spurred me to grab a book off the shelf that has a number of his images. Looking at those pictures makes me think of someone who always seemed to have a child's sense of wonder of the world around him.
Sparky
08-14-2006, 12:06 AM
He came from a well-to-do family...
yeah - don't they all!!! Bastards.
LOL
HerrBremerhaven
08-14-2006, 02:22 AM
Really agree with the view that this image is probably one of the best photos ever made. Simply fantastic usage of available gear at the time, and fully intentional in rendering. It would be tough to criticize the image at all, except maybe that it remained relatively unknown for such a long time.
What amazes me is the relative lack of progress of so many photographers after the time of this image. While we obviously have many great photographs that come after this time period, there are rare exceptions that express a scene in a uniquely photographic way. What I mean by that is had an illustrator or painter been near that seen at that same moment, the resulting image would have very likely been quite different.
Ciao!
Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com
SuzanneR
08-14-2006, 06:35 AM
Hard to dislike Lartigue! Full of life, and as someone said, childlike wonder.
Jerevan
08-14-2006, 07:07 AM
This photograph is one of my all time favourites, too. One of those photographs which can be distilled into one word: Speed!
I think what JHL said (reportedly when he was 7 or 8 years old) also sums up something essential: “It's marvellous, marvellous! Nothing will ever be as much fun. I'm going to photograph everything, everything!”
I still get a kick out of that photograph and those words. The wonder of the world still lies in front of us.
Timothy
08-14-2006, 07:25 AM
What I like about all of the work from Lartigue that I have seen, is that it succeeds so wonderfully at being both an interesting/amusing artistic expression (to me it seems like poetry), while at the same time being a truly revealing "documentary" glimpse of the times that he lived in and of the social class he lived in. It is obvious that he was not worried about the mundane details of how to pay his bills because there is so much playfulness and beauty in his images. This might be because he was well off, financially, or just because he was playful and carefree by nature. I prefer to think the latter (for no real reason). It makes me think of Doisneau who also worked in Paris but a little bit later than Lartigue. The other important difference is of course that Doisneau was a professional photojournalist who very much needed to keep the bills paid. But still, when you look at lots of his work you see a real sense of humour and love of life. The difference is that the world of Doisneau is working class, and the world of Lartigue is aristocratic. To find someone with the skills and motivation of Doisneau in the working class is to be expected, really. But, to find someone like that in the aristocratic world is unique. That could be a whole other discussion itself.
The thing that matters, I think, is that all of these people succeeded so well at giving us a "window" on their world. I am including the work of Lee Friedlander here, which is actually discussed in a separate thread. The thing is that many people have said they do not find the Friedlander stuff to be artistically interesting, or something like that. Well, fair enough, but you can not deny that he susseeded in showing us what his world was like - not just what it looked like, but what it looked like to him - and perhaps his "poetic vision" is just not as appealing to many people as that of Lartigue.
Tim R
Bill Mitchell
08-14-2006, 07:32 AM
Originally Posted by David H. Bebbington
"He came from a well-to-do family."
yeah - don't they all!!! Bastards. LOL
Adams: wealthy family on the way down, married heir to concession in Yosemite who supported them. Arbus and Avedon: Fathers owned high-class clothing stores in NYC. Bourke-White: wealthy family. Cartier-Bresson: one of the "Great Families of France." Eisenstadt: poor immigrant, well-to-do family lost everything in post WW1 German inflation. Walker Evans: Father was successful stockbroker. Karsh: penniless immigrant. Kertesz: Banking family, came to America broke, wife developed wildly successful cosmetic business. Dorothea Lange: mother was social worker, father deserted them, she married tenured professor. Gene Smith: father made fortune in grain elevators, lost everything, committed suicide for the life insurance. Steichen: self-made, had very poor immigrant parents. Stieglitz: Rich father, married successful painter O'Keefe. Strand: Father was wealthy importer. Weston: family were upper-middle class professionals, he married one of the land-owning California Chandler family who raised the children and partially supported him until his second marriage.
Several of these people lived in abject poverty, but had family resources to fall back on.
GraemeMitchell
08-14-2006, 09:28 AM
money still doesn't buy talent, vision, work ethic, personality, charm, style, and so on and so forth. all qualities the greats had and have in droves.
copake_ham
08-14-2006, 11:31 AM
It would seem almost a given that many (most?) early photographers would come from families with "means". Who else would have had the resources to purchase cameras, equipment, chemicals, film/plates etc.? [Same could probably said for many painters etc.]
Only after Kodak (and others) came out with the simple box camera did it become an instrument available to the middle and working classes - and even then there was the cost of film and developing etc.
money still doesn't buy talent, vision, work ethic, personality, charm, style, and so on and so forth. all qualities the greats had and have in droves.
But it buys you the ability to chase a dream. What most folks back then were not able to do. Sure is a different world now.
About the image-First time ever heard of the guy. Great image, great feeling. Thanks for posting.
blansky
08-14-2006, 12:01 PM
I love his work.
The car/speed photograph always brings a smile to my face in the cartoon type look of the wheels and the sort of hunched over huddled intensity of the drivers.
A lot of his work is a fantasy time in the affluent carefree days of the 30s (for some) that is so classy and elegant. Like the Fred Astaire movies like Top Hat and the great Art Deco period. Before WW2 and everything came crashing down.
Great stuff.
Michael
pentaxuser
08-14-2006, 01:12 PM
It works so well because it reminds you of a time when speed was visual and thrilling in a way it isn't today. Stirling Moss summed it up for me when he said that grand prix racing lost something when spectators could no longer see the driver's arms and his facial expression as he fought with the wheel.
pentaxuser
Gay Larson
08-14-2006, 05:11 PM
Well here's a photographer's work that you can just pour over. There's something in every photograph that speaks in volumes. I really enjoy his work. Interesting that although he was a young man this image stands up with any great photographer of any age.
jp80874
08-14-2006, 08:49 PM
I love his work.
The car/speed photograph always brings a smile to my face in the cartoon type look of the wheels and the sort of hunched over huddled intensity of the drivers.
Great stuff.
Michael
Lartique was a master at laughing at the pretensions of the wealthy society about him, the Victorian women in elegant clothing, the scenes he and his brother Zissou set up, the world falling in love with automobiles and airplanes. He documented many of the early European flying machines. Later he and his model girlfriend Renee were great friends of Jean Bugatti and the wealthy racing crowd.
John Powers