Lartigue's Winter Pictures

Taken between 1913 and 1939, Jacques-Henri Lartigue's photographs of winter are characterized by their surprising modernity, spontaneity, and singular vision. Fascinated by speed, energetic sports, fashionable summer gathering places like the Riviera and Deauville, and beautiful women, Lartigue's glamorous photographs have left a unique chronicle of the pleasures of France's smart set during the interwar years. Following Flammarion's highly successful Lartigue's Rivlera, this volume celebrates the daily pleasure and pristine beauty of a world magically transformed by snow - in Megeve, St. Mortiz and Chamonix skaters leap high above the ice, toboggans hurtles above snow drifts, people ski on empty slopes wearing dark goggles and sumptuous woolen ski wear. But Lartigue was also fascinated by the pure graphic beauty of a tree-lined route under snow, Versailles covered in snow in the 1920s, and his own shadow against a snowy mountain in St. Moritz - at once seemingly spontaneous, but carefully and sensitively composed. Magnificently reproduced in duotone, this collection of winter pictures, many seen her for the first time, will delight all those interested in the history of fashion and of photography.