The Great Nadar

Starred review from April 17, 2017
A self-described “real daredevil, always looking for tides to swim against,” the 19th-century French legend Nadar is depicted with a vividness commensurate with his audacity in this scintillating biography. Born Félix Tournachon in 1820, he began publishing stories and sketches while in his teens and befriended Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, and other literary luminaries. He then moved on to illustration, developing a distinct style of caricature marked by exaggerated heads and revealing facial features that made him famous in newspapers and periodicals under his nickname Nadar. He found his true calling in 1848, at the height of the photography boom, when he opened what would become Paris’s most famous photography studio and began turning out famous portraits of Sarah Bernhardt, George Sand, Champfleury, and other celebrities of the day. Toward the end of his life, Nadar spearheaded France’s hot-air-balloon craze and took the first-ever aerial photographs. Begley (Updike) situates his portrait of Nadar within a colorful evocation of the bohemian circles in which his subject both flourished and frequently provoked controversy. The book includes detailed descriptions of the nuances of Nadar’s unique photographic portraits. These descriptions capture the artistic qualities that attracted Nadar’s clients to his studio and that make these works his enduring legacy. 132 b&w photos. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Inc.

June 1, 2017
A lively portrait of a photography pioneer who altered the cultural landscape of 19th-century France.If readers in America know anything about Gaspard-Felix Tournachon (1820-1910), better known as Nadar, it's that he took some penetrating, iconic pictures of French celebrities--Victor Hugo, Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, and George Sand among them--and perhaps also that he broke new ground in aerial photography by taking his camera and tripod aloft in a hot air balloon. As Begley (Updike, 2014, etc.) reveals in this entertaining biography, these facts hardly suggest the full range of Nadar's involvement in the haut monde of his day. He was also a cultural force, a one-man entertainment industry who spawned a host of imitators. In his early days, he was a young rebel. Along with close friends like the poet Charles Baudelaire and the tormented (and ultimately suicidal) writer Gerard de Nerval, he was a bohemian: young men of exhausted means who lived on the margins of society, borrowing from each other and running up debts. Nadar started his professional life as a writer of hopelessly corny moral tales. Never one to stay in the same place for long, he then became a widely known caricaturist who created a pen-and-ink pantheon of French society under the Second Republic of Louis-Napoleon. Barely did he make a name for himself before giving it up for photography, where he found his calling. He became a master of the new medium, adept at manipulating light and shade. He gained wealthy clients who liked seeing themselves immortalized in their finest clothes; he also helped create what we now know as celebrity culture. He also became rich enough to pursue new and sometimes insanely risky ideas involving flight as well as to fight endless legal battles with the brother who kept stealing his name. Begley capably brings to life the lost Parisian world where Nadar held court. His outsized personality dominates this enjoyable and amply illustrated volume.

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Starred review from June 1, 2017
Tall, long-legged, red-haired Felix Tournachon (18201910) was a whirlwind of creative energy as a writer, caricaturist, photographer, aviator, and one of the world's first publicists (of himself, primarily). Under his trade name, Nadar, he became more famous in his time than all but the best known of his caricature and portrait subjects, saliently including the original cultural bohemians who made Paris the world capital of advanced art, literature, and politics before, during, and after the Second French Empire. Irrepressibly enthusiastic, he made his name by making their names; indeed, Nadar was, Begley (Updike, 2014) says, among the first to grasp the need for celebrity by artists who in post-royalist, post-aristocratic times depended on the public for their livings. His are the famous photoportraits of Baudelaire, Hugo, Sand, Dumas, Bernhardt, Kropotkin, himself (most famously, stuffed into the gondola below an apparently airborne balloon), and other cultural giants. He masterminded spectacular gas-balloon flights as publicity stunts to finance developing powered and steerable aircraft, and he pioneered aerial and underground photography as well as aerial surveillance during the Prussian siege of Paris. Withal, he was a loyal friend and family man and a galvanizing host whose only prejudice was against monarchy. Begley literately chronicles and appreciates his subject's life and portraiture with gusto that equals Nadar's own.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2017

Former books editor of the New York Observer, Begley offers the portrait of 19th-century photographer and balloonist Nadar as celebrity and entrepreneur.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2017

Gaspard-Felix Tournachon (1820-1910), the Great Nadar, was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloonist, and colorful self-promoter. Working in the catacombs of Paris, he pioneered the use of artificial lighting and was reportedly the first to make aerial photographs. Among his works are portraits of the finest artists, authors, and musicians of the day, including Charles Baudelaire, Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Daguerre, Claude Debussy, Eugene Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas, Franz Liszt, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, George Sand, Emile Zola, and many others. Nadar's photography is held by many renowned collections and art museums. In this meticulously researched narrative, former New York Observer books editor and author Begley (Updike) captures the spirit of the man who inspired Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon and who became the model for a character in Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Told in a pleasant, conversational style, this title is not only filled with curious, whimsical details about a lively figure, it is also is a very readable narrative. VERDICT An entertaining book that will appeal to anyone interested in the history of photography and 19th-century social and cultural history.--Raymond Bial, First Light Photography, Urbana, IL

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.