Nadar aerial photography

Summary of Nadar

Nadar was a flamboyant personality and a man of infatigable spirit. A writer, caricaturist, inventor and adventurer, yet still best known perhaps as a celebrity portrait photographer, he placed himself at the very epicenter of nineteenth century French modernism. In addition to his satirical caricatures, Nadar produced (and sold) informal "inner-life" portraits of the new literati from his landmark studio-cum-gallery, a site from which, the Impressionist also launched their inaugural public exhibition. Restricted by the studio, Nadar took to the under and above ground to expand his photographic repertoire, patenting aerial photographs for mapmaking and surveying, and taking his handmade electric light underground to illuminate his unique photographs of the famous Paris catacombs. Though his entrepreneurial spirit led to several setbacks, Nadar nonetheless set commercial (in addition to aesthetic) precedents for the reproduction and hawking of his superior celebrity portraits.

Accomplishments

• Nadar made his name initially as a satirical writer, critic and car
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  Bates College

  Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, “Nadar”(French, 1820-1910) 

  Nadar was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, and novelist deeply interested in science and politics. He initially enrolled in medical school, but gave up his studies for journalism. Later, he became a cartoonist that used photography as a tool. Nadar opened his first portrait studio with his brother in 1855 and his first independent studio in 1900. 

  Nadar also helped to promote artists and art movements that he hoped would gain popularity during his lifetime. He held the first Impressionist exhibition in his studio in 1874, providing a forum for the art of Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Francisco Pizarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 1979.

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  A very personal and subjective view of Paris life for all of you who are curious of what's going on in France

  Charles Carolus-Duran, Felix Nadar, 1886, Le Bourget, Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace

  The pseudonym Nadar invented by Felix Tournachon in the 1840’s has become a synonym of early photography, of Parisian life and black and white excellence. We always forget that there were three “Nadars” and that Felix, the eldest was the greatest, as we can read in Stéphanie de Saint Marc’s excellent biography of the master. But Bibliothèque Nationale de France chose to portray the three members of the family, Felix, Adrien Tournachon, his brother, and Paul Nadar his son.  And even Marthe, Paul’s daughter, who like her ancestors was first a painter and then a photographer. The result is a wide exhibition with 300 photographs, which lacks a proper story and an angle. A little confusing.

  Paul Nadar, Joséphine Baker, ca 1930, BnF, département des Estampes et de la photo

  After a first part dedicated to self portraits and the family’s stu