A Floating World. Photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986). CaixaForum Madrid

"To be a photographer is to trap one's own amazement". Throughout his life, Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) was faithful to the constant quest of doing just this. From his early childhood, he photographed everything that moved him, touched him in some way, made him happy, seemed beautiful to him and helped him to combat the passing of time, oblivion. Unanimously recognised today as one of the great names in 20th-century photography, Lartigue's work forms a unique chronicle of a period and a lifestyle.

A Floating World. Photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) is the first major anthological devoted to this photographer in Spain. The show features more than two hundred works from the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue in Paris, including both modern copies and original shots that Lartigue took and developed himself, some using a stereoscopic camera. The exhibits also include cameras, notebooks, agendas and several volumes of the diary he kept all his life. A Floating World? focuses particularly on the themes he explored throughout his career: photography as an instrument of memory, a tool for capturing the fragility of existence; and the short-lived nature of happiness. The works shown here also reflect Lartigue's peculiar vision of women and of a rapidly-changing world. All this enables the visitor to discover, through Lartigue's unmistakable images, a portrait of long-lost world, the work of a master who, though his career spanned nearly 90 years, never ceased to consider himself an amateur.

The curators of the exhibition A Floating World. Photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) are Florian Rodari and Martine d'Astier de la Vigerie, director of the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue, assisted by Maryam Ansari. The show will be open to the public at CaixaForum Madrid (Paseo del Prado, 36) from 4 March ? 19 June 2011.     More information in the PDF press release