The photographer who photographed himself: Jacques Henri Lartigue on display in Rome with ‘The invention of happiness’

Jacques Henri Lartigue did what no photographer had done before and what no one did after: photographing his own life. From 30 October to 9 January 2022, the WeGil in Rome, the cultural hub of the Lazio Region in Trastevere, hosts “The Invention of Happiness. Photographs”, an exhibition dedicated to the French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), already received with great happened in Venice and Milan. This is the largest retrospective ever made in Italy, it is curated by Marion Perceval and Charles-Antoine Revol, respectively director and project manager of the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue and by Denis Curti, artistic director of the Casa dei Tre Oci is promoted by the Lazio Region and is created by Laziocrea, in collaboration with Casa Tre Oci of Venice and Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue of Paris. The exhibition gathers 120 images, 55 of which are unpublished, all coming from Lartigue’s personal photo albums, some pages of which are exhibited in facsimile. To these are added some archival materials, books such as the Diary of a Century (published under the title “Instants de ma vie” in French) and periodicals. These documents trace his entire career, from the beginnings of the early 1900s to the 1980s, and reconstruct the history of this photographer and his rediscovery. In this context, 1963 is a crucial year: John Szarkowski, recently appointed director of the photography department of the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) exhibits his works, allowing him to achieve success when he is now close to seventy. . (continued) The itinerary follows a chronological order, flanked by a focus on the main moments of rediscovery of Lartigue’s work, starting with the review of the New York museum, during which his first shots before the First World War are presented, and which of him the child prodigy of photography. Inspired by the newspapers and illustrated magazines of this era, Lartigue took an interest in the wealthy Parisian bourgeoisie, who found themselves at the automobile Grand Prix, the horse racing of Auteuil, as well as the elegant men and women who frequented them. “The ‘part of the world’ of Lartigue – writes Denis Curti in his text in the catalog – is that of a rich and bourgeois Paris of the nouveau siècle, and even when Europe is crossed by the horrors of the two world wars, Lartigue will continue to preserve the purity of his photographic microcosm, continuing to fix on the film only what he wants to remember, to preserve. Stopping time, saving the moment from its inevitable passage. Photography becomes for Lartigue the means to resurrect life, to relive happy moments , again and again”. Following the success achieved with the exhibition at the MoMa, towards the end of the 1960s, Lartigue met Richard Avedon and Hiro, two of the most influential fashion photographers of the time, who immediately fell in love with his art. Avedon, in particular, soon proposes to him to create a work that takes the form of a photographic ‘newspaper’, showing a little more of the Lartigue archives. Helped by Bea Feitler, the then artistic director of Harper’s Bazaar, in 1970 they published the “Diary of a Century” which definitively consecrated him among the greats of 20th century photography. (continued) However, Lartigue has long ceased to be the amateur photographer of the turn of the century. Since the 1940s he has published his photographs in magazines, combining his social encounters and sophisticated shots. After the deepening of the period of his rediscovery, the last sections focus on the 70s and 80s, marked by collaborations with the world of cinema, where he works as a still photographer for numerous films, and fashion. Lartigue, however, never managed to get away from everyday life, always immortalizing many curious and irony details. An interesting focus is also reserved for the memoirs that Lartigue wrote in the 60s and 70s, when he began to reconstruct his albums in which he had collected all his shots. The exhibition is accompanied by the bilingual catalog Marsilio Editori, with essays by Marion Perceval,