Twintig portretten van Marcelle Lender, Mademoiselle Verneuil en Mademoiselle Géraldine before 1892

These twenty portraits of Marcelle Lender, Mademoiselle Verneuil and Mademoiselle Géraldine, are from a book by Nadar. He was a key figure in the emergence of photography as an art form. Photography was often regarded as purely mechanical, more akin to industrial production than artistic creation. But Nadar’s approach demonstrates the skill and artistic vision required to make a truly compelling image. Notice how he has arranged these portrait studies, almost like a grid. Each photograph captures a unique expression or pose from the models, and in this way he uses the reproducibility of photography to record these specific ephemeral moments in time. Nadar’s work speaks to the democratization of image-making in the 19th century. He used the mechanical eye of the camera to reveal the inner lives of his subjects, in multiple forms, and demonstrates that creativity can be found even in the most industrial processes.