Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon)

Nadar, French photographer, 1820-1910

Nadar opened his photography studio in rue Saint Lazare in 1854 and photographed a wide range of personalities: politicians like Proudhon, stage actors like Sarah Bernhardt, writers like Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire, painters like Corot, or Delacroix, and musicians like Liszt, Rossini, Offenbach, Verdi, and Berlioz. Nadar refused to use the traditional sumptuous decors, preferred natural daylight and despised useless accessories. In 1858 he became the first person to take aerial photographs. Examples of Nadar’s photographic portraits are held by many of the great national collections of photographs.