"La Vie en Relief," a 68-minute 3D documentary directed by Denis Gaubert, celebrates the life and work of Jacques Henri Lartigue, a French amateur photographer known for capturing joy and movement in everyday life. The film is set to release in theaters on September 16, almost forty years after Lartigue’s death on September 12, 1986. Lartigue is best known for creating the official portrait of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the French president, in 1974. The president wanted a cheerful image, and he chose Lartigue, whose work was already renowned for its lightness and positivity. Jacques Henri Lartigue was born in 1894 into a wealthy family. His father, a prominent banker, introduced him to photography at a young age. As a child, Lartigue recorded in his journal that he had taken his first photograph completely on his own in 1902. This early experience sparked a lifelong passion for capturing life through the lens. Later in life, he would modestly describe himself not as a professional photographer, but as someone who simply took photographs for pleasure throughout his life. Lartigue was particularly known for his use of stereoscopic photography, a technique that involves taking two slightly offset images that, when viewed through special glasses, create a three-dimensional effect. He used this method to capture movement and depth, such as in a famous 1905 photo of his cousin flying down a staircase in Paris. Even in his later work, like the 1974 portrait of Giscard d'Estaing, he preserved this sense of motion—evident in the flying flag rather than the traditional stillness of a presidential portrait. The documentary highlights how Lartigue's photographs reflect a life untouched by the hardships of war or political turmoil, a privilege of his bourgeois background. His images often depict scenes from his family’s estate in Rouzat or the horse races in Auteuil, filled with soft light and a sense of carefree existence. The film weaves together Lartigue's personal writings, diaries, and agendas with his photographs, offering a rich and intimate view of his life. Director Denis Gaubert emphasizes that Lartigue’s quotes are authentic and that his story, while romantic, is also grounded in the simplicity of daily life. The documentary focuses not on his later fame, but on the decades of work he quietly created before being discovered by the wider world of photography.