Nadar

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orig. Gaspard-Félix Tournachon

born April 5, 1820, Paris, France

died March 21, 1910, Paris

French photographer, caricaturist, and writer.

When his father's bankruptcy forced him to leave medical school in 1838, he settled in Paris and began selling caricatures to humour magazines. By 1853 he had become an expert photographer and had opened a portrait studio. His studies of prominent Parisians such as Charles Baudelaire (1855) and Eugène Delacroix (1855) were exceptional in their naturalness, in contrast to the stiff formality of most portraits of the time. His studio became a favourite meeting place of the Paris intelligentsia and was the site of the first Impressionist exhibit. A tireless innovator, in 1855 he patented the idea of using aerial photographs in mapmaking and surveying, and in 1858 he himself made the first successful aerial photograph, from a balloon. He also wrote novels, essays, satires, and autobiographical works.

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