A.C.F. Grand Prix, Automobile Delage

About the Photographer

Lartigue, Jacques Henri

French (1894-1986)

Having studied painting at the Académie Julian in Paris from 1915 to 1916, Jacques Henri Lartigue considered himself a painter first and was only “discovered” as a photographer in 1963, when at the age of 69, an exhibition of his work opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Worldwide fame followed three years later with the publication of his first book The Family Album, and in 1970 with Diary of a Century, conceived by Richard Avedon. Lartigue made photographs throughout his life, producing spontaneous, candid images of family and friends during his boyhood that marked a departure from the formal portraits of the early twentieth century. In the 1910s and 20s, he enthusiastically photographed automobile races and sporting events, fashionable ladies of the Bois de Boulogne, kite flying and other childhood pastimes, capturing a sense of movement and fleeting moments that were remarkable at the time.