Félix Nadar

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (5 April 1820 – 20 March 1910), known by the pseudonym Nadar, was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloonist, and proponent of heavier-than-air flight. In 1858, he became the first person to take aerial photographs.

Photographic portraits by Nadar are held by many of the great national collections of photographs. His son, Paul Nadar (1856–1939), continued the studio after his death.

Life

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (also known as Nadar) was born in early April 1820 in Paris, though some sources state he was born in Lyon. His father, Victor Tournachon, was a printer and bookseller. Nadar began to study medicine but quit for economic reasons after his father's death.

Nadar started working as a caricaturist and novelist for various newspapers. He fell in with the Parisian bohemian group of Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, and Théodore de Banville. His friends picked a nickname for him, perhaps by a playful habit of adding "dar" to the end of words, Tournadar, which later became Nadar. His work was published in ''Le Charivari'' for the first time in 1848. In 1849, he founded ''La Revue Comique à l'Usage des Gens Sérieux''. He also edited ''Le Petit Journal pour Rire''.

From work as a caricaturist, he moved on to photography. He took his first photographs in 1853, and in 1854 opened a photographic studio at 113 rue St. Lazare. He moved to 35 Boulevard des Capucines in 1860. Nadar photographed a wide range of personalities: politicians ( Guizot, Proudhon), stage actors ( Sarah Bernhardt, Paulus), writers (Hugo, Baudelaire, Sand, Nerval, Gautier, Dumas), painters (Corot, Delacroix, Millet), and musicians (Liszt, Rossini, Offenbach, Verdi, Berlioz). Portrait photography was going through a period of native industrialization, and Nadar refused to use the traditional sumptuous decors; he preferred natural daylight and despised what he considered to be unnecessary accessories. In 1886, with his son Paul, he did what may be the first photo-report: an interview with the great scientist Michel Eugène Chevreul, who at the time was 100 years old. It was published in ''Le Journal Illustré''.

File:Brooklyn Museum - Nadar Élevant la Photographie à la Hauteur de l'Art - Honoré Daumier.jpg, ''Nadar élevant la Photographie à la hauteur de l'Art'' ("Nadar elevating Photography to Art"). Lithograph by Honoré Daumier, appearing in ''Le Boulevard'', 25 May 1863
File:Henry de Montaut, Petit, Catastrophe du ballons Le Géant. - La nacelle rasant le sol à Nieubourg (Hanovre). - D`après les renseignements fournis par M. Nadar. Gravure 1863.jpg, 1863: Disaster with ''Le Géant'' at Neustadt am Rübenberge at Hanover. Illustration in a newspaper
File:Felix Nadar in a balloon, late 1860s photographer Felix Nadar (4559203377).jpg, Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) c. 1863, studio portrait, carte-de-visite
File:Nadar, Félix - Self-portrait.jpg, Studio portrait of Nadar in a balloon basket, c. 1863

In 1858, he became the first person to take aerial photographs. This was done using the wet plate collodion process, and since the plates had to be prepared and developed (a process that required a chemically neutral setting) while the basket was aloft, Nadar experienced imaging problems as gas escaped from his balloons. After Nadar invented a gas-proof cotton cover and draped it over his balloon baskets, he was able to capture stable images. He also pioneered the use of artificial lighting in photography, working in the catacombs of Paris. He was thus the first person to photograph from the air with his balloons, as well as the first to photograph underground, in the Catacombs of Paris. In 1867, he published the first magazine to focus on air travel: ''L'Aéronaute''.

In 1863, Nadar commissioned the prominent balloonist Eugène Godard to construct an enormous balloon, high and with a capacity of , and named ''Le Géant'' (The Giant).
On his visit to Brussels with ''Le Géant'', on 26 September 1864, Nadar erected mobile barriers to keep the crowd at a safe distance. Crowd control barriers are still known in Belgium as ''Nadar barriers''.
''Le Géant'' was badly damaged at the end of its second flight, but Nadar rebuilt the gondola and the envelope, and continued his flights. In 1867, he was able to take as many as a dozen passengers aloft at once, serving cold chicken and wine.

For publicity, he recreated balloon flights in his studio with his wife, Ernestine, using a rigged-up balloon gondola. He stayed a passionate aeronaut until he and Ernestine were injured in an accident in ''Le Géant''.

''Le Géant'' (The Giant) inspired Jules Verne's ''Five Weeks in a Balloon''. Nadar was the inspiration for the character of Michael Ardan in Verne's ''From the Earth to the Moon''. In 1862, Verne and Nadar established a ''Société pour la recherche de la navigation aérienne'', which later became ''La Société d'encouragement de la locomotion aérienne au moyen du plus lourd que l'air'' (The Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier than Air Machines). Nadar served as president and Verne as secretary.

During the Siege of Paris in 1870–71, Nadar was instrumental in organising balloon flights carrying mail to reconnect the besieged Parisians with the rest of the world, thus establishing the world's first airmail service.

In April 1874, he lent his photo studio to a group of painters to present the first exhibition of the Impressionists. He photographed Victor Hugo on his death-bed in 1885. He is credited with having published (in 1886) the first ''photo-interview'' (of famous chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, then a centenarian). His photographs of women are notable for their natural poses and individual character. Nadar was recognized for breaking the conventions of photographic portrait, choosing to capture the subjects as active participants.

As of 1 April 1895, Nadar turned over the Paris Nadar Studio to his son Paul. He moved to Marseille, where he established another photography studio in 1897. On 3 January 1909 he returned to Paris.

Nadar died on 20 March 1910, aged 89. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The studio continued under the direction of his son and long-term collaborator, Paul Nadar (1856–1939).

Works

Towards the end of his life, Nadar published ''Quand j'étais photographe'', which was translated into English and published by MIT Press in 2015. The book is full of both anecdotes and samples of his photography, including many portraits of recognizable names.Adam Begley
"The absurd life of Félix Nadar, French portraitist and human flight advocate"
''The Guardian'', 23 December 2015.

The painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres sent some of his clients to Nadar to have their photographs taken as studies for his paintings.

Gallery

File:JapaneseMissionAndNadarSon.JPG, Nadar's son (center) with Yatsu Kanshiro (left) and an unnamed samurai (right), photographed by Nadar. They were members of the Second Japanese Embassy to Europe in 1863
File:Dessin de Nadar 1850.jpg, Caricature of Balzac, 1850
File:Charles Baudelaire.jpg, Charles Baudelaire
File:Sarah Bernhardt, par Nadar, 1864, sepia.jpg, Sarah Bernhardt
File:Georges Ernest Boulanger by Atelier Nadar.jpg, Georges Boulanger
File:BRÉSIL, Marguerite Neurdein. Photo Nadar.jpg, Marguerite Brésil
File:LeBris1868.jpg, Le Bris and his flying machine, Albatros II (could be misattributed, some sources say the photographer was ''Pépin fils'')
File:Maréchal Canrobert by Nadar.jpg, François Certain de Canrobert
File:Georges Clemenceau Nadar.jpg, Georges Clemenceau
File:Atelier Nadar - Pierre Kropotkine.jpg, Peter Kropotkin
File:Prince Czartoryski by Nadar.jpg, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski
File:Claude Debussy ca 1908, foto av Félix Nadar.jpg, Claude Debussy
File:Félix Nadar 1820-1910 portraits Eugène Delacroix.jpg, Eugène Delacroix
File:Paul Gustave Dore by Felix Nadar 1855-1859.jpg, Gustave Doré (1859)
File:Alexandre Dumas Nadar.jpg, Alexandre Dumas, père
File:N Gabrielli par Nadar.jpg, Nicolò Gabrielli di Quercita
File:Galliffet, Gaston de.jpg, Marquis de Galliffet, the ''fusilleur de la Commune''
File:Charles Gounod (1890) by Nadar.jpg, Charles Gounod in 1890
File:Elisabeth de Gramont - Nadar - 1889.jpg, Élisabeth de Gramont, 1889
File:Franz Liszt by Nadar, March 1886.png, Franz Liszt
File:Ilja Iljitsch Metschnikow Nadar.jpg, Ilya Mechnikov
File:Jean-François Millet by Nadar, Metropolitan Museum copy.jpg, Jean-François Millet
File:Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, close up, with slight smile by Nadar.jpg, Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar, king of Persia 1848–1896
File:George Sand by Nadar, 1864.jpg, George Sand (1864)
File:Édouard de Reszke by Nadar (BPL Hale Coll).jpg, Édouard de Reszke
File:Séverine, debout, un poing sur la hanche - Nadar.jpg, Séverine (c. 1895)
File:Émile Zola Nadar.jpg, Émile Zola (1895)
File:Pedro II do Brasil por Nadar 1891.png, Pedro II of Brazil

See also

* Prix Nadar, French photojournalism prize given in Nadar's name
* Mononymous person, a person known with only one word
* Michel Ardan, a character from the 1865 novel ''From the Earth to the Moon'' who was inspired by Nadar

References

External links

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1867 Caricature of Nadar by André Gill

Article about Nadar
by Bruce Sterling

Article about Nadar
by Roger Cicala


numerous photographs by Nadar
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nadar
Pioneers of photography
1820 births
1910 deaths
Aerial photographers
French balloonists
French caricaturists
Portrait photographers
Artists from Paris
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Lycée Condorcet alumni
19th-century French photographers
20th-century French photographers