In today's culture, we want to get the latest scoop, the most intriguing photos of celebrities and other famous people. Having one's portrait or photo on a magazine cover almost equates to fame or popularity. But in the mid-18th century, there was a man who had preempted paparazzis and celebrity photography. His name was Nadar.
Félix Nadar is a legend in his native France. A tall, exuberant red-haired dynamo with a fascination for fame, he came to know everyone who was anyone in his career as a journalist and caricaturist.
Instinctively understanding the emerging interest in celebrity – and the role photography could play in it – he created psychologically complex portraits of the leading artists, writers and actors of mid-19th-Century Paris which managed to turn the nascent medium into an artform.
His talent for self-promotion and daring ballooning exploits ensured he was as well-known as his clients. A fact he emphasised by having his name writ large in red glass tubing – the letters 10ft (3m) high and glowing neon-bright at night – across the front of his sumptuous Parisian photography studio.
(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
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