Portret van Gil Naza before 1880

This is a portrait of Gil Naza by Nadar, and was made in France sometime in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. It is not a painting, but rather a photograph printed in a magazine called "Paris Portrait". Photography in nineteenth-century France was still a relatively new technology, and this image gives us a sense of the institutional contexts in which it was developing. For instance, the magazine in which it was printed was dedicated to portraits of people involved in Parisian theatre, and the image is itself framed with symbols of drama and comedy. Nadar, who made this photograph, was himself an important figure in the institutionalization of art photography. It's fascinating to consider how the social function of images was changing, and how an artist like Nadar helped to define photography as a form of art in its own right. Studying publications like "Paris Portrait", along with the biographies of artists like Nadar, helps us to understand how photography gained acceptance in the art world.