Nadar was the professional pseudonym adopted by the celebrated French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, and balloonist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, born in Paris in 1820, who became one of the most influential and pioneering figures in the early history of photography. The name Nadar, derived from a contraction of his nickname Tourne-à-dard - a playful reference to his sharp wit - became one of the most famous and recognisable names in nineteenth century French cultural and artistic life, synonymous with photographic portraiture of the highest quality and with a spirit of bold creative and technological innovation that defined his remarkable career.
Nadar is perhaps most celebrated in the history of photography for his achievement as the world's first aerial photographer, making the earliest known successful aerial photographs from a captive hydrogen balloon over Paris in 1858. The technical challenges of aerial photography at this period were formidable, as the wet collodion process then in universal use required the photographer to coat, expose, and develop glass plates within a matter of minutes before the sensitised collodion dried and lost its sensitivity, all while suspended in a basket beneath a balloon at altitude. Despite these considerable difficulties, Nadar successfully produced photographic images of the terrain below, opening up an entirely new perspective on the world and establishing the foundation of aerial photography as both a practical and artistic discipline.
Beyond his pioneering aerial work, Nadar was equally celebrated during his lifetime as one of the foremost portrait photographers of the nineteenth century, operating a celebrated studio on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris that attracted the most distinguished figures of French intellectual, artistic, and political life as subjects. His portrait photographs of contemporaries including the writer Victor Hugo, the poet Charles Baudelaire, the composer Hector Berlioz, the painter Eugène Delacroix, and the scientist Michel Eugène Chevreul are recognised as masterworks of photographic portraiture, distinguished by their directness, psychological penetration, and the respect and empathy with which Nadar approached his subjects.
Nadar was also a significant innovator in studio photography, becoming the first photographer to make portraits using artificial electric light in 1861, and the first to photograph the Paris sewers and catacombs using artificial illumination, demonstrating the potential of photography to document subjects and spaces previously inaccessible to the medium. His studio was also notable as the venue for the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, when he generously made his premises available to Monet, Renoir, Degas, and their colleagues for the exhibition that would launch one of the most important movements in the history of art.