I have a photographer that I want to share with you today and we're going to look at some of the work by Jacques-Enri L'Artie, who was a French photographer born in 1894.

There are several things that I think make Jacques-Arry-Lartieg's work very significant and make it stand out. First of all, he was for most of his life an amateur photographer. He did not shoot professionally. In fact, most of his most famous works were done at a very early age, anywhere from the age of 10 to his mid to late 20s.

He shot his entire career.

It wasn't until the 1950s when he started doing a little bit of commercial work and

then in 1962, I guess he was almost at the age of 70 by then

that his work was shown to John Sarkowski at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art

New York, that his work became known to people and I think that's what makes it kind of special is that

Lartigue shot for himself and there is a real sense of passion and drive that goes

into a lot of these early photographs. The second thing that I think is really

interesting about Lartigue is that his compositions are nice and you know he's

got all the classic elements of being a great photographer but the one thread

that you see through his entire career that is really

interesting is the sense of action.

When I interviewed Laura Wilson for the artist series a few months ago, she's very influenced

by Lartigue and she's a big fan and she said it's this

element of surprise and I think that says it beautifully. The photographs

there's never anything expected but there's always that element of surprise and I

want to kind of talk about that some today because always that

element of surprise and I want to kind of talk about that some today because it makes him

really special. The first image that I want to show you is was done at the age of

10 very early age and it's not I mean this image has some problems with it, but what it shows is a photographer

who's very new to photography, but it is a cat jumping up to chase a ball, and I think that that

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