© Jacque-Henri Lartigue
FORMA Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro, 1 I-20136 Milano Italie
On Thursday 22 September at 6 pm, the exhibition The choice of happiness. Photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue, will be inaugurated at Forma Fundation for Photography.
One of photography's precocious prodigies, a genial enthusiast and a professional of happiness. All of the above was photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue, who achieved fame during the sixties, on the threshold of his eight decade, when his photographs reached the spaces of the MOMA in New York.
He was born into a wealthy French bourgeois family at the beginning of the twentieth century. From an early age the young Lartigue began to capture the romance of his family life in images, images seen through the eyes of a child, full of wonder and laughter. From then on, this 'boy' who spent his long life without ever having to worry about making ends meet, would manage to create images of infinite poetry and rare grace, thanks to his spontaneity and intimacy and a magic that still enchants us today. Together with his diary, photography was Lartigue's record of his experience and the things he wished to experience; an attempt to find happiness for himself and his charmed little world, happiness that might last for ever. Thus, every day he would collect amazing images with his camera, waterfalls and fountains, happy friends, beautiful smiling women, fluttering dresses, car races, seaside outings, fragments of carefree joy, wishing, with aching nostalgia, that that day might never end.
From 5 October, the exhibition, which presents a selection of Lartigue's most significant photographs, will be further enriched with select pages from the great photographer's diary and his albums of large photographs: JH Lartigue. Diary in Images.
Vignette : © Jacque-Henri Lartigue
