The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera - Hardcover

Nadar described himself as a reckless enthusiast, a hyperkinetic presence, every father-in-law s worst nightmare, someone who never missed an opportunity to talk about rope in a house where someone has been hanged or ought to be hanged. That was nowhere near the half of it. Adam Begley fills in the rest, providing a portrait every bit as seductive as was its irresistible, irrepressible subject. --Stacy Schiff"

"A superb account of one of the nineteenth century's most irrepressible spirits. Nadar was the founding genius of photography, especially portraiture, a heroic, disaster-prone balloonist, as well as a journalist, cartoonist, would-be revolutionary and one of the first 'bohemians'. Adam Begley brilliantly evokes the Paris of the Second Republic and Second Empire, its gloriously impoverished and eccentric artistic milieu, its squalor and political turmoil. Nadar knew everyone and took the photographs of the men and women who defined the era. Here the best work is excellently reproduced and discussed with great sensitivity and insight; from every point of view The Great Nadar is a beautiful book." --Ian McEwan
"Nadar described himself as a reckless enthusiast, a hyperkinetic presence, every father-in-law's worst nightmare, someone who 'never missed an opportunity to talk about rope in a house where someone has been hanged or ought to be hanged.' That was nowhere near the half of it. Adam Begley fills in the rest, providing a portrait every bit as seductive as was its irresistible, irrepressible subject." --Stacy Schiff
"Adam Begley has found the perfect biographical subject in Nadar--an irrepressible artist, a daring pioneer, a wild-eyed visionary, an outrageous self-promoter, and an enfant terrible, who, like some sort of Zelig, seemed to turn up alongside every major figure in Paris during the heady period of the mid-nineteenth century. But what makes this book so mesmerizing is Begley, who, with his own artistry, brings Nadar roaring to life on every page." --David Grann


-A superb account of one of the nineteenth century's most irrepressible spirits. Nadar was the founding genius of photography, especially portraiture, a heroic, disaster-prone balloonist, as well as a journalist, cartoonist, would-be revolutionary and one of the first 'bohemians'. Adam Begley brilliantly evokes the Paris of the Second Republic and Second Empire, its gloriously impoverished and eccentric artistic milieu, its squalor and political turmoil. Nadar knew everyone and took the photographs of the men and women who defined the era. Here the best work is excellently reproduced and discussed with great sensitivity and insight; from every point of view The Great Nadar is a beautiful book.- --Ian McEwan
-Nadar described himself as a reckless enthusiast, a hyperkinetic presence, every father-in-law's worst nightmare, someone who 'never missed an opportunity to talk about rope in a house where someone has been hanged or ought to be hanged.' That was nowhere near the half of it. Adam Begley fills in the rest, providing a portrait every bit as seductive as was its irresistible, irrepressible subject.- --Stacy Schiff
-Adam Begley has found the perfect biographical subject in Nadar--an irrepressible artist, a daring pioneer, a wild-eyed visionary, an outrageous self-promoter, and an enfant terrible, who, like some sort of Zelig, seemed to turn up alongside every major figure in Paris during the heady period of the mid-nineteenth century. But what makes this book so mesmerizing is Begley, who, with his own artistry, brings Nadar roaring to life on every page.- --David Grann

Adam Begley is the author of Updike. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 2010 and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography in 2011; from 1997 to 2009 he was the books editor of The New York Observer. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The London Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement. He lives with his wife in Cambridgeshire, England.