April 06, 2011 <Back to Index>
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Félix Nadar was the pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (6 April 1820 – 21 March 1910), a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist and balloonist. Some photographs by Nadar are marked "P. Nadar" for "Photographie Nadar". Nadar was born in April 1820 in Paris (though some sources state Lyon). He was a caricaturist for Le Charivari in 1848. In 1849 he created the Revue comique and the Petit journal pour rire. He took his first photographs in 1853 and in 1858 became the first person to take aerial photographs. He also pioneered the use of artificial lighting in photography, working in the catacombs of Paris. Around
1863, Nadar built a huge (6000 m³) balloon named Le Géant ("The Giant"), thereby
inspiring Jules
Verne's Five
Weeks
in a Balloon. The "Géant" project was unsuccessful
and convinced him that the future belonged to heavier-than-air machines. Afterwards "The
Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier
than Air Machines" was established, with Nadar as president and Verne
as secretary. Nadar was also the inspiration for the character of
Michael Ardan in Verne's From the
Earth to the Moon. On his
visit to Brussels with the Géant, on 26
September 1864, Nadar erected mobile barriers to keep the crowd at a
safe distance. Up to this day, crowd
control
barriers are
known in Belgium as Nadar
barriers. In April
1874, he lent his photo studio to a group of painters, thus making the
first exhibition of the Impressionists possible. 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), and also took erotic
photographs. From 1895
until his return to Paris in 1909, the Nadar photo studio was in Marseilles (France). On his
passing in 1910, Nadar was buried in Le
Père
Lachaise Cemetery in
Paris. |