Lartigue, Jacques Henri

Lartigue, Jacques Henri (zhäk äNrē` lärtēg`), 1894–1986, French photographer. The first exhibition of Lartigue's work, at New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1962, revealed a remarkable personal use of the photographic medium. Trained as a painter, he considered taking pictures a hobby until the MoMA show brought him wide recognition as a photographer. Presented with his first camera at seven, he illustrated a witty, sophisticated, and detailed large-format diary of his life (in some 125 volumes) with thousands of photographs. They form a moving and exuberant composite portrait of the family, friends, and lifetime of a man of the world. Lartigue's diary and photographs have been published as Diary of a Century (ed. by R. Avedon, 1970).