Jacques Henri Lartigue, The Imprint of Happiness

There are several reasons why a house traditionally devoted to painting is today holding an exhibition dedicated to an emblematic figure of photography.

The first lies in the very material of the exhibition: an ideal selection of vintage prints of Lartigue's finest images, from the personal collection of the artist and his wife Florette. To this is added a very rare childhood album, assembled for the photographer's mother around his very first pictures, his drawings, and photographs by other members of the family. This album is, in the words Irving Penn uses here, "a tender and unique testimony" to Lartigue's precocious talent.

Another reason follows an artistic logic: the evident links with Vuillard (our previous exhibition), that "admirable" painter, in Lartigue's own words, whom he came to know through Sacha Guitry. These two artists, whom Lartigue portrayed together and separately, share with the photographer an evident vocation to bear witness, through the major means of expression of the 20th century (photography, painting, cinema and theatre), to their time, to their contemporaries, and to an ideal France, nourished by the arts and inexorably destined to dissolve as the world changed.

The last, and certainly the most crucial, reason for showing Lartigue is that from childhood he never ceased to answer the most unpleasant realities with a demonstration of love: love for his family, love of life, love of discovery and novelty, the thrill of competition.

In fact, Lartigue explored the most positive ingredients of his time: innovation, surpassing oneself, elegance as an art of living. His work gracefully combines depth and detachment. He never gave in to the temptation of frivolity, that superficial double of joie de vivre, and while he was far from unaware of the tragedies of the century he lived through, he always had the audacity to affirm the quintessence of pleasure, and to build his work around a dream: the permanence of happiness.

My warmest thanks go to Gail Buckland of the Cooper Union, whose preface conveys so well the joy of presenting a Lartigue exhibition, and to Irving Penn for sharing his personal vision of the artist. I also thank Edwynn Houk for sharing his insights into the photographer's work. Finally, I am grateful to Larisa Dryansky, who joins me in expressing our deep gratitude to the Association des Amis de Jacques Henri Lartigue, and in particular to its director, Martine d'Astier.

Luc Bellier