Nadar (pseudonym)

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Image:Nadar selfportrait.jpg Image:Nadar.jpg

Nadar was the pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (April 6 1820 – March 21 1910), a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist and balloonist.

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Biography

Nadar was born at Paris (other sources states Lyon).

He was a caricaturist for Le Charivari in 1848. In 1849 he created the Revue comique and the Petit journal pour rire. He took his first photographs in 1853 and in 1858 became the first person to make aerial photographs.

Around 1863, Nadar built a huge (6000 m³) hot air balloon named Le Géant ("The Giant"), thereby inspiring Jules Verne's Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon). The "Géant" project was unsuccessful and convinced him that the future belonged to heavier-than-air machines. "The Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier than Air Machines", with Nadar as president and Jules Verne as secretary was established. Image:LeBris1868.jpg In April 1874, he lent his photo studio to a group of painters, thus making the first exhibition of the Impressionists possible. 1874. He photographed Victor Hugo on his death-bed in 1885. He is credited with having published (in 1886) the first photo-interview (of famous chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, then a centenary), and also took erotic photographs.

On his passing in 1910, Nadar was interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The character of "Michel Ardan" in De la Terre à la Lune is inspired by Nadar.

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