Nadar

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon was born 5 April 1820 and worked under the name Nadar as a caricaturist, journalist, and novelist before the camera took over. In 1858 he lifted a camera into a balloon and made the first aerial photographs, proving both his technical nerve and his belief in heavier-than-air flight years before it arrived. Back in the studio he shot portraits that now anchor the great national photography collections — faces of his century caught with clarity that outlasted the sitters. His son Paul Nadar kept the studio running after he died on 20 March 1910.