In pictures: Jacques Henri Lartigue

1 of 9 The first major showing in the UK of the acclaimed French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue's magical photographs takes place this summer at the Hayward Gallery.

2 of 9 From the age of six, Lartigue avidly photographed his family and friends. Enamoured with life, he delighted in using his camera to capture moments of happiness. (Photo: My cousin Bichonnade)

3 of 9 Over the next 85 years he created an extraordinary archive of albums, pictures of fashionable beauties, French high society at play, the Côte d'Azur...

4 of 9 ...motor racing exploits and early experiments in flight.

5 of 9 Lartigue photographed them all with breathtaking ease, spontaneity and vitality, revealing himself as an innocent modernist and an innate genius with the camera.

6 of 9 Some of Lartigue's most captivating images are of sensationally stylish ladies through the ages, including his three wives and his lovers.

7 of 9 Although he exhibited with fellow photographers such as Brassaï, and Man Ray, Lartigue found international fame only in his late sixties when his first solo exhibition opened to rave reviews at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1963.

8 of 9 An unfailingly curious amateur, he experimented with all the available photographic techniques, from stereoscopic images and autochromes to multiple exposures, meticulously arranging his several thousand images in large albums.

9 of 9 In 1979 Lartigue donated his entire photographic collection to the French state, which later formed the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue. He died in Nice in 1986. The exhibition is open from 24 June - 5 September 2004.