Lartigue was born into an upper-middle-class family in Courbevoie, near Paris. He began to photograph at age seven when he received his first camera, a large 13 x 18 cm affair on a wooden tripod, from his father, an amateur photographer himself. Upon receiving his first camera, he wrote: "Now I will be able to make portraits of everything ... everything. I know very well that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken, and I will take them all!" Photographing for his own innocent pleasure the varied day-to-day activities of his family and friends, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, a child prodigy of the camera, captured the excitements and fragile beauties of La Belle Epoque at the beginning of the century with a striking freshness and authenticity. Richard Avedon has called Lartigue "the most deceptively simple and penetrating photographer in the history ... of that art." Lartigue: Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris 1911
Lartigue: Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris 1911