Nadar, Paul, 1856-1939

Paul Nadar (1856-1939) inherited the Nadar portrait studio in Paris from his father, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, the innovative photographer, caricaturist, and writer, who went by the pseudonym Nadar (which he adopted at age 18 in 1838). As the only child of Félix and Ernestine Nadar, and the nephew of artist-photgrapher Adrien Tournachon, Paul Nadar grew up in the bohemian milieu of Belle Époque Paris. He was devoted to the business, and by the early 1870s was already working both behind the camera and helping Ernestine Nadar to run the business side of the studio which had moved from 35 boulevard des Capucines to 57 rue d'Anjou. By 1880, Paul Nadar was running the studio and shifting its business model from the artistic aesthetic his father's portraiture was known for to the more conventional studio aesthetics of the time which relied on elaborate studio furniture, props, and backdrops that attracted a wider clientele. While this change, along with the the adoption of more profitable production methods, gave the studio a more secure financial footing than it had ever had under his father, it also caused a considerable rift between the two men.

By 1886, their differences were put aside as father and son collaborated on what is considered to have been the first photo interview, conducted as part of the festivities celebrating the 100th birthday of scientist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, the organic chemist and color theorist who was a beloved figure in France. The Nadars interviewed Chevreul in their studio over the course of three days. As Nadar père interviewed Chevreul, Paul Nadar captured their conversations with approximately 100 instantaneous photographs, while also recording it on Clément Ader's phonophone, a type of early phonograph. An article matching thirteen photographs with excerpts from the transcript of one of the conversations was published in Le Journal illustré (no. 36, September 5, 1886). Titled "L'Art de vivre cent ans: trois entretiens avec M. Chevreul à la veille de sa cent et unième année," it was the first photo essay to be published in the press, placing Paul Nadar on the cutting-edge of news reportage. A few years later Paul Nadar's photographs from the interview were one of the main attractions at the 1889 Exposition universelle. Later that year Le Figaro commissioned him to photograph Charles Chincholle's interview with Georges Boulanger, the nationalist general and politician popularly known as "Général Revanche" ("General Revenge").

Like his father, Paul Nadar was an innovative experimenter throughout his career. He furthered his father's forays into aerial photography using a hot-air balloon as their vehicle. While Nadar père's surviving aerial photographs were taken from a tethered balloon, in 1886, Paul Nadar succeeded in taking about thirty images during a six-hour balloon flight between Versailles and Camp Conlie in the Sarthe. The Nadars were among the first professional photographers to use the gelatin silver dry plate process, a method which propelled the development of instant photography. Paul Nadar was an especially keen user and promoter of instant photography. He was quick to adopt Kodak's flexible film and portable cameras, both of which were instrumental to his photography of the performing arts and to his live photojournalism. Paul Nadar developed the Nadar Express Détective camera with Eastman in 1888, and in 1893, he became the exclusive distributor of Eastman Kodak products in France. That year he also invented the glass negatives known as "Nadar extra-fast plates."

Invited to exhibit at the 1890 Tashkent Exhibition, Nadar traveled through Central Asia on the Trans-Caspian railway which was built by the Russian army between 1866 and 1888. He used both Kodak and Nadar Express Détective instant cameras to take over 1,800 photographs during his three-month journey. Nadar exhibited his Turkestan photographs at several World's Fairs in the 1890s, and in 1894, the geographer, Édouard Blanc, used Nadar's images to illustrate an article that he published in the Annals of Geography. At Nadar's studio the images were available for purchase in several formats including prints of various sizes, stereoscopes, and projection plates.

Paul Nadar became the legal owner of the Nadar Studio in 1895 and ran it until his death in 1939. His daugther Marthe then ran the studio for a few years before closing it. In 1950, Anne Nadar, Paul's second wife, sold the entire contents of the studio to the French government.