Nadar

Nadar may refer to:

Places

People

Nadar (photographer)

Nadar was the pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (6 April 1820 – 23 March 1910), a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, and balloonist (or, more accurately, proponent of manned flight).

Examples of Nadar's photographic portraits are held by many of the great national collections of photographs.

Life

Nadar was born in April 1820 in Paris (though some sources state Lyon). His father, Victor Tournachon, was a printer and bookseller. After his father's death, Nadar decided to quit his medical studies for economic reasons. Nadar started working as a caricaturist and novelist for various newspapers. He fell in with the Parisian bohemian group: Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire and Théodore de Banville. His friends picked a nickname for him: Tournadar, which later became Nadar. His work was published in Le Charivari for the first time in 1848. In 1849, he founded the Revue comique and the Petit journal pour rire.

From work as a caricaturist, he moved on to photography, particularly portraits. He opened his photography studio in rue Saint Lazare in 1854 and moved to 35 Boulevard des Capucines in 1860. Nadar photographed a wide range of personalities: politicians (Guizot, Proudhon), stage actors (Sarah Bernhardt), writers (Hugo, Baudelaire, Sand, Nerval, Gautier, Dumas), painters (Corot, Delacroix, Millet), and musicians (Liszt, Rossini, Offenbach, Verdi, Berlioz). Portrait photography was going through a period of native industrialization and Nadar refused to use the traditional sumptuous decors, preferred natural daylight and despised useless accessories. In 1886, with his son Paul, he did what may be the first photo-report: an interview with the great scientist Chevreul (who was then 100 years old). It was published in le Journal Illustré.

Nadar (caste)

Nadar (also referred as Nadan, Shanar) is a Tamil caste of South India and Sri Lanka. Nadars are predominant in the south Indian districts of Tuticorin, Kaniyakumari, Tirunelveli and Virudhunagar.

The Nadar community was not a single caste, but developed from an assortment of related subcastes and classes of different origins, which in course of time, came under the single banner Nadar. Nadars are predominant in the south Indian districts of Tuticorin, Kaniyakumari, Tirunelveli and Virudhunagar. Nadar climber was the largest subsect of today’s Nadar community. A few subsects of the Nadar community, such as the Nelamaikkarars, were traditionally wealthy landlords and money lenders. Historically, most Nadars were cultivators of palmyra trees and jaggery and a few were also involved in the toddy trade. Nadar climbers had faced discrimination from major upper castes in some regions. A martial art that has been called Southern-style Kalaripayattu since around 1958 was historically practised by the Nadars.