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Lot Essay
Lartigue met Florette Orméa, 27 years his junior, in Monte Carlo in 1942 and married her in Paris in 1945.
Lartigue writes in his diary:
Florette gives me her youth, her freshness, her beauty, and her love. As for myself, I sense that I am hard, harsh, and uncompromising. I find my own self extremely disagreeable. Never in my life, perhaps, have I been showered with so many proofs of love. Never, surely, have I been so egotistical. Why? Because she brings me treasures that are superfluous to me. Because I didn't want to have any more treasures (Paris, January 1942).1
1 Quoted in Jacques Henri Lartigue: l'Album d'une vie, Centre Pompidou, 2003, n.p.
Lartigue writes in his diary:
Florette gives me her youth, her freshness, her beauty, and her love. As for myself, I sense that I am hard, harsh, and uncompromising. I find my own self extremely disagreeable. Never in my life, perhaps, have I been showered with so many proofs of love. Never, surely, have I been so egotistical. Why? Because she brings me treasures that are superfluous to me. Because I didn't want to have any more treasures (Paris, January 1942).