In uniting 300 pieces from its collection, the Bibliothèque Nationale explores a century of photography through the work of Félix, Adrien and Paul Nadar.
In the Nadar family, there was the father, actually called Félix Tournachon, who was born in 1820, nearly twenty years before the birth of photography was proclaimed, and died in 1910, when it was already launched on its inexorable popularisation. Familiar to everyone for his portraits of Balzac, Baudelaire and Sarah Bernhardt, Nadar was the most famous photographer of the 19th century, together with Eugène Atget. Félix Tournachon adopted the patronym in around 1840, when he was working in satirical newspapers. At the time it was common to use nicknames, and the ending "dar" was in vogue. "Tournadar" finally became "Nadar".
Paul Nadar (1856-1939), "Stéphane Mallarmé", 1897, BnF, Department of Prints and Photography.
From One Nadar to the Next In the Tournachon family, there was also a sibling, Adrien (1825-1903), known as "young Nadar". Following a court case against his elder brother, he no longer had the right to use this name after 1857. While Félix was all fire and passion, like his many and varied activities…
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