Nadar
Paris, 1820 - 1910, Paris
Person TypeIndividual
Last Updated8/7/24
Luxembourg, 1879 - 1973, West Redding, Connecticut
Hesse, Germany, 1833 - 1904, Queens, New York
BiographyBorn into a family of printers, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon began his career as a journalist, and later a caricaturist. He began to use the name "Nadar" in 1939 in his articles written for Parisian journals. He first attempted photography in 1853 and in 1854 he studied photography with Camille d'Arnaud. He opened his own studio in Paris and became known as a respected portrait photographer, with a concern for grasping the sitter's "inner life". In 1857, Nadar began to experiment with electric lighting and then opened the Salon of Electric Photography in Paris. In 1858, Nadar took the first aerial photographs of Paris from a hot air balloon. Two years later, he established branch studios in Paris and Marseille, and was named Inspector General of Photographers of the French Army in 1861. From 1861 to 1862, Nadar made photographic reportages on the sewers and catacombs of Paris. In 1870 Nadar organized a carrier-pigeon and micro photography system to deliver messages out of the beseiged city of Paris. Nadar's son Paul became director of the photography business in 1874 and became head of the firm in 1886 upon the retirement of his father. A fourth Nadar studio was opened in Marseille in 1896. (ULAN, accessed 9/1/2016)