NADAR, Félix

About the French photographer Félix NADAR (1820-1910)

Félix NADAR (actually Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) was a photographer, caricaturist, writer and pioneer of aerial photography. He studied medicine in Lyon, but soon gave up his studies to work as a journalist. In 1854, he opened a studio for photographic portraits in Paris. Unlike other commissioned photographers, he soon dropped accessories and painted backgrounds and dispensed with retouching. His portraits stage the models using lighting, silhouettes, concentration on the gaze and hands. His aim was to capture the subject psychologically, as it were. In 1859, Nadar took the first aerial photographs from a balloon at the Battle of Solferino. In 1860, he took a series of photographs of a young intersex person who had a male physique and stature and was possibly classified as female or identified herself as female. His long exposures in the Parisian catacombs and sewers have also become famous. Félix NADAR died in 1910, shortly before his 90th birthday. After his death in 1911, his studio was run by his son Paul NADAR (1856-1939).

Photo books with works by Félix NADAR

• 'Nadar. Photograph berühmter Zeitgenossen“ (1977); ‚Photographies‘ (1994); ‚Nadar‘ (1995); “Nadar/Warhol: Paris/New York: Photography and Fame“ (1999); ‚Phaidon 55‘ (2001); ‚George Sand et Félix Nadar‘ (2004); ‚When I Was a Photographer‘ (2015); ‚Les catacombes vues par Nadar‘ (2016); “The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera“ (2017); “Nadar. Bilder der Moderne“ (2019, von Bernd Stiegler);