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third and fi nal studio at 51 rue d’Anjou. Under Paul,
the new studio catered to a more affl uent clientele and
prospered. As a photographer, Paul made fashionable
images of the bourgeois and aristocratic clientele. In
1890, he began shooting from a hot-air balloon as his
father had earlier. After these works were exhibited,
he was caricatured in the press as “The Fearless Paul
Nadar” for his courage and his experimentation with
photography. In 1890, Paul photographed sites in Europe
and Asia along the ancient silk route. He worked with
new equipment from Eastman Kodak and, in 1893, he
became an agent for George Eastman in France. He
inherited the Nadar Studio after his father’s death in
- The studio survived only a few years after Paul’s
death on September 1, 1939.
See also: Cartes-de-Visite; Collodion; Pictorialism;
and Société française de photographie.
Further Reading
Bernard, Anne-Marie ed., The World of Proust as Seen by Paul
Nadar, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Hambourg, Maria Morris ed., Nadar, New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1995 (exhibition catalogue).
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne. Industrial Madness, Commerical
Photography in Paris, 1848–1871, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1994.
NARCISO DA SILVA, JOAQUIM
POSSIDÓNIO (1806–1896)
Joaquim Possidónio Narciso da Silva was one of the
main 19th century Portuguese photographers. Par-
ticularly during the 1860s, he produced beautiful salt
paper prints of Portuguese monuments, however he is
best known as an architect and archeologist. His pho-
tography was, as a matter of fact instrumental to his
research in architecture and archeology. Very young
he went with the Portuguese Royal Family escap-
ing from the Napoleonic invasions to Brazil. Latter,
between 1821 and 1834, he studied and worked in
France and Italy. He was a founding member of the
Real Associação dos Arquitectos Civis e Arqueólogos
Portugueses in 1863 and latter of the Museu Nacional
de Arquelogia. Before that, in 1862–63 he published
the illustrated magazine Revista Pitoresca e Descritiva,
which, in several issues, presented 26 photographs
as salted paper prints of some of the most important
Portuguese monuments. As a photographer, as well as
an architect and archeologist he promoted nationalism
by means of knowledge of monuments and history. In
1875 he was a member of the commission charged of
the reform of fi ne arts where he proposed the inclusion
of photography in museums.
Nuno Pinheiro
NASMYTH, JAMES HALL (1809–1890)
AND CARPENTER, JAMES (1840–1899)
James Nasmyth’s place in the history of photography
lies in the area of scientifi c illustration. He was a suc-
cessful inventor who was able to retire in 1856 to pursue
his interests as an amateur astronomer. Nasmyth had
built his fi rst telescope in 1827 and began to study the
surface of the moon in 1846. He made a series of draw-
ings recording his observations as photography was not
yet able to record images under these conditions. These
drawings received a medal when they were exhibited at
the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Nasmyth then
constructed three dimensional models of the surface of
the moon based on these drawings. These models were
then photographed under conditions of bright sunlight
to emphasis the contours of the terrain.
These photographs were of the special type used in
the Woodburytype process. In the process of developing
these special photographs, the lighter areas were rinsed
away, leaving intaglio matrices. Lead was pressed into
these matrices to form a relief and this relief was used
to print the illustration in the book. The result was an
image that more faithfully reproduced the continuous
value gradations within the emulsion of a photographic
print than the hatching technique of engravings. These
Woodburytypes were published in a book titled The
Moon as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite in 1874 in
collaboration with James Carpenter, Nasmyth’s friend
and a professional astronomer associated with the Royal
Observatory at Greenwich.
The creation of Woodburytypes was a cumbersome
and time-consuming procedure. At the time, however, it
was a practical medium for printing a photograph with
a text. Tipping actual photographs into a text strained
the limits of producing large amounts of positive prints
from a single negative. The economic alternative of an
engraving made from an original photograph allowed the
intervention of the hand to subvert the objective value
of photography as a mechanical imaging process which
had been one of photography’s most valued attributes
from its earliest development.
The Woodburytypes maintained the integrity associ-
ated with mechanical imaging technology as objectivity
was a central concern for science and scientifi c illus-
tration. Thus the Woodburytype would have seemed
to be the perfect medium for scientifi c illustration
despite being cumbersome and expensive. It is ironic
that Nasmyth’s use of drawings and the construction of
models, accepted practice in scientifi c research and pub-
lication, may be seen as subverting the very truth value
of the photograph that made photography a valued tool
for science. Nasmyth’s models of the moon’s surface
refl ected his desire to present “a rational explanation of
the surface details of the moon which should be in ac-
cordance with the generally received theory of planetary