Lartigue : The Boy and the Belle Epoque
Regular price £27.95'Captures the carefree, haute-bourgeois lifestyle of the young photographer' - Financial Times
A richly illustrated book weaving the story of Lartigue's childhood with a social and cultural portrait of the Belle Epoque
As a little boy of seven or eight, Jacques Henri Lartigue was given his first camera, and soon was developing his own photographs. Born into a prosperous family, from childhood Lartigue acutely observed the social rituals of the upper echelons of society through his photography. The hand-held Kodak camera, first introduced in 1888, granted the young photographer flexibility to capture the fine details of eccentric family members at home, the elaborate social parade in the Bois de Boulogne, on the beach in Normandy and beyond.
Classic images of motor cars and high fashion sit alongside previously unpublished photographs from the Lartigue archive. These images of family beau-monde and demi-monde life are not only evidence of a prodigious talent, but also offer an intimate, adolescent perspective of Belle-Epoque Paris, the world of Proust, Debussy and the Nabis, before the outbreak of the First World War. At a young age Lartigue mastered the medium of photography: this exploration of his extraordinary childhood is interwoven with a social and cultural portrait of the Belle Epoque.
Details
- Author: Louise Baring
- Hardcover: 192 pages | 150 black and white illustrations
- Date published: March 2020
- Language: English
- ISBN: 978-0500021309
- Product Dimensions: 24.7 x 19.8 cm
Reviews
'this Proustian volume distils an era through a charmed, yearning but sharp and original eye' - FT
'The photographs in Baring s delightful book are a testament to Lartigue s intense love of the world and the pleasures it affords' - Irish Times
'Brings a wonderful clarity to his formative years ... beautiful, blithe, strange, addictive' - World of Interiors
'Captures the carefree, haute-bourgeois lifestyle of the young photographer' - Financial Times
'Baring engagingly sets out the context of the Lartigue family and supplies pocket biographies for the figures ... who populate Lartigue s photographs' - Spectator
