The Olympic Games provide an opportunity to pay tribute to Jacques Henri Lartigue, photographer of the art of outdoor living, with a major exhibition at the Polka Gallery. A spotlight on him!

THE BIRTH OF A PHOTOGRAPHER

French painter, writer, and photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue was born at the end of the 6th century. From his earliest childhood, his father introduced him to photography. Armed with his first camera at the age of six, he tirelessly photographed his childhood, punctuated by car trips and family vacations. Curious about all new photographic techniques, he practiced color photography, using the autochrome process, and stereoscopic photography from a very young age. In 1963, at the age of 69, Lartigue exhibited for the first time at the MoMA in New York. That same year, Life magazine featured a portfolio of his work in the same issue that announced the death of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. His photographs circulated around the world, establishing him overnight as one of the great names in 120th-century photography. In 1979, Jacques Henri Lartigue donated his extensive photographic work to the French State and entrusted the Jacques Henri Lartigue Donation with the task of preserving, promoting and disseminating the approximately 000 photographs taken throughout his life…

IN THE WORLD OF JACQUES HENRI LARTIGUE

A product of the Belle Époque, Jacques Henri Lartigue remains in history as a witness to a bygone era. Through his lens, the photographer immortalized his family members, high society in its ceaseless social parade, the early days of aviation, automobile rallies in the Auvergne region, bathers in Deauville and Biarritz, and winter sports in Switzerland. A genius of black and white, his photographs of subjects in motion depict a youth so idyllic it seems almost unreal. A succession of small, everyday joys, the artist's works are like paintings frozen in time. He, who was a painter before becoming a photographer, even acknowledges this in his memoirs: "It is with my painter's eye that I see everything." Halfway between visual culture and art photography, his photographs, as poetic as they are charming, are like a window onto 20th-century France. A lovely way to explore all the themes dear to the artist, such as the fleeting nature of the passing moment, the brevity of happiness, or the fragility of life!

A DIFFERENT IDEA OF SPORT

From the Belle Époque to the 1980s, Jacques Henri Lartigue photographed literally everything that moved. Tennis matches, ball games, rowing competitions, beach games, skiing, snow sports, water sports, car races: while the artist didn't practice any particular sport, his aim was to define an ideal of sport, whatever its form, as a way of life. Images of bodies in the throes of exertion are rare. No sweat, no suffering. In his black and white photographs, the photographer reveals players frozen in motion, capturing the moments of adrenaline and fulfillment provided by physical activity, which he recognized as a continuum of pleasures.

Just weeks before the Paris 2024 Olympics, the Polka Gallery presents the work of this photographer of fleeting moments. Through a selection of prints on the theme of sport, the exhibition is both a tribute to Jacques Henri Lartigue's innovative aesthetic and a valuable record of sporting practices at the beginning of the 20th century. A time when sport was practiced in everyday clothes, but always with the same beauty of movement…

"DIVINELY SPORT" POLKA GALLERY
12, RUE SAINT-GILLES, PARIS 3RD
FROM AUGUST 29 TO SEPTEMBER 7, 2024
POLKAGALERIE.COM