Biography

Félix Nadar

April 1820 – 20 March 1910  ·  French  ·  Known for: First aerial photograph (1858)

Félix Nadar
French photographer, caricaturist and balloonist who became the first person to take aerial photographs in 1858, shooting Paris from a hot air balloon.
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, known by his pseudonym Nadar, was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, and balloonist who was a proponent of heavier-than-air flight. In 1858 he became the first person to take aerial photographs. His son, Paul Nadar, continued the studio after his death.

I

Early Life

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon was born in early April 1820 in Paris, though some sources state he was born in Lyon. His father, Victor Tournachon, was a printer and bookseller. Nadar began to study medicine but quit for economic reasons after his father's death.

II

Career & Pseudonym

Nadar started working as a caricaturist and novelist for various newspapers. He fell in with the Parisian bohemian circle of Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, and Théodore de Banville. His friends gave him a nickname, perhaps by a playful habit of adding "dar" to the end of words — Tournadar — which later became simply Nadar.

His work was published in Le Charivari for the first time in 1848. In 1849 he founded La Revue Comique à l'Usage des Gens Sérieux, and also edited Le Petit Journal pour Rire. Photographic portraits by Nadar are held by many of the great national collections of photographs worldwide.

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