Jacques Henri Lartigue: Life in Colour, at the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) is mostly known for his black-and-white photographs. These have an ability to make the past look enviable: the motor cars, aeroplanes, the seaside holidays, the pet dogs, sport and the elegant Parisians (and especially the Parisennes); a place and time apparently possessed of unlimited sunshine and leisure. Even when technically imperfect, Lartigue draws the viewer in. Jacques Henri Lartigue: Life in Colour, at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, adds a further dimension to the familiar picture, demonstrating that colour was not an incidental aspect of his career but a recurring interest. Along with the prints there are stereo autochromes (a selection of which were for me the highlight of the show), lightboxes and projected images, as well as some of his fashion drawings. He flirted with abstraction and combining his interests in photography and painting.

Lartigue started taking pictures early, and never lost the habit. His father, who we learn was during Lartigue’s childhood the eighth richest man in France, gave him his first camera when he was under 10, so Jacques was photographing from childhood, recording his milieu. It quickly becomes clear he was not a dullard snapshooter but a persistent experimenter. His fascination with movement is particularly striking. He was attracted to things already in the process of disappearing, such as a car passing, a body jumping, a dress blowing in the wind, arresting the moment before it was gone (the exhibition aptly makes the comparison with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment). In these he shows a modernist sensibility.

He began making autochromes in 1912, abandoning the process in the late 1920s because the length of exposure required the subject to be static. He briefly resumed making autochromes on a flexible base in 1946, presumably Lumicolor, before switching to colour transparency film in about 1949-50. Ektachrome and Kodachrome introduced a lusher dimension to the graphic economy of the black-and-white work. Looking at his career as a whole, it seems less a case of a brilliant youth followed by decades of repetition than of an artist returning to familiar themes and finding new ways of seeing them. The exhibition makes this apparent by pairing thematically related images in both black and white and colour taken decades apart.

Ther is though, I think, a caveat. Before he was obliged to take commissions he was free to photograph what interested him. When he had to make a living as his family’s fortunes declined, much of the work became more studied, with commercial outlets in mind. He remained a fine photographer, with a creative eye, but he lost a certain joie de vivre he had when he was able to play around with nobody to please but himself. I did, though, like the fact that when commissioned by the magazine Point de Vue to photograph the 1956 Grace Kelly/Prince Rainier wedding he subversively concentrated on the crowds and other photographers, rather than the happy couple – unsurprisingly, his pictures were not published.

Still, why colour Lartigue has been largely neglected is a puzzle. As far back as 1980 he produced a book on his autochromes (translated into English by Brian Coe and published in the UK the following year). More recently, Martine d’Astier and Martine Ravache compiled a book in French which was translated into English as Lartigue: A Life in Colour, on the back of an exhibition in Paris in 2015. Flammarion issued a budget-priced book including colour in 2019. In 2024, Atelier EXB published The Proof of Color, containing Lartigue’s 90 surviving autochromes. But it is as if we have to discover this aspect anew.

So the gallery has done a valuable service in highlighting this significant part of his oeuvre, and for those willing to be seduced it is hard to resist the show’s charms. It sends the visitor out of the peaceful gallery into an unglamorous Milton Keynes Lartigue would undoubtedly have avoided, with a suspicion that one has been looking at the world too seriously and, like Lartigue, should seek out the playful. MK Gallery has done a good job in bringing this relatively unfamiliar Lartigue to Britain.

Mounted in collaboration with the Association des Amis de Jacques Henri Lartigue, the French Ministry of Culture and diChroma photography, the exhibition runs from 20 June to 4 October 2026.

 

References

d’Astier, Martine and Ravache, Martine. (2015) Lartigue: A Life in Colour. New York: Abrams.

Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue. (2019) Jacques Henri Lartigue. Flammarion.

Lartigue, Jacques Henri. (1981) The Autochromes of J. H. Lartigue, 1912–1927. Translated by Brian W Coe. London: Ash & Grant.

Lartigue, Jacques-Henri. (2024) Jacques-Henri Lartigue: The Proof of Color. Edited by Marion Perceval and Kevin Moore. Paris: Atelier EXB.

The SPR’s 48th International Annual Conference, 2025: The Online Experience

I attended the 2025 Society for Psychical Research conference, held at Milton House, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, on 18-19 October, remotely via Zoom. The editor of The Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research, Gordon Rutter, asked me to contribute a short account of the online experience to accompany the main conference report. I did so, but rather than being included as a separate item my contribution was appended to a lengthy article produced by several individuals, with the result that I ended up as one of its co-authors.

My section, lightly edited, concludes the report, but I thought I would reproduce it here, as submitted, so that it is clear which part I am responsible for. (Despite the cover stating 2025, the issue was published in 2026, as indicated by the copyright date on p. 2.)

Reference

Ison, Debbie, Turnbull, Emily, Hopkins, Matthew, Ruffles, Tom and Rutter, Gordon (2026) ‘48th SPR International Annual Conference 2025’, The Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research, 17, pp. 19–26.

 

In addition to in-person attendance, the conference was accessible via Zoom for those who could not make the journey to Abingdon.  There are advantages not having to travel to a conference venue, in terms of both cost and time.  Another plus is that recordings are made available afterwards, so it is not necessary to set aside the entire weekend – useful for those who have other commitments, or who live in time zones where live sessions would entail a very early start or late finish.

There was a slightly shaky start to the first session, but sound and screen-sharing issues were quickly resolved and those tuning in remotely were able to enjoy the talks as if they were present in the room.  Thanks are due to the technical team whose efforts ensured a smooth and enjoyable experience: Ashley Knibb, Gwen Bagni (the human interface with the online audience), and Marta Mellifluous.  It was possible to submit questions through Zoom’s chat function, and all those asked by the online audience were answered, not always the case with hybrid conferences.

There are of course some differences.  Foremost among these is the loss of the social aspect: the absence of informal networking and opportunities to make new friends, an important part of any such meeting.   A couple of speakers requested their slides not be shared online, only projected in the room, meaning they were difficult for the online viewers to read.  Gary Lachman's Saturday after-dinner talk was not on Zoom, though it was recorded and will be available later.  Similarly, we missed out on Melvyn Willin’s musical contribution, which has long been a key element of the conference, as well as the rather fetching tote bags produced for the event.

In sum, I would recommend Zoom as an excellent substitute for the full in-person experience.  While it cannot fully replicate actually being there, it nonetheless enables those who, for whatever reason, would otherwise be unable to participate directly to share in this major gathering of SPR members, hear the fascinating range of presentations, and come away enriched.