Felix Nadar 1820 -1910

Felix Nadar 1820 -1910

Was a bit of an entrepreneur and dabbled in lots of things including writing plays and inventing crowd control barriers.  He was persuaded to move into photography by a friend in the 1850’s as it was seen as an up and coming profession.  He took many photographs of famous people at that time, this included Jules Vern a writer who is famous for such books as ‘A journey to the centre of the Earth’.
He initially set his brother up in the photography business and then became interested himself so joined him.  Apparently his brother Adrian lacked commitment and so it’s Nadar himself who was the one who made some stunning photographs for that time in history.
 Nadar made numerous self-portraits, which allowed him to experiment with poses and gestures before using the camera on his subjects.

This is an image taken of Sarah Bernhardt a famous actress at the time.  Nadar had got better with his posing using a side profile and also the actress was covered in a velvet drape and this put the emphasis on her neck and face.
Ref;  http://www.getty.edu/art/
The disadvantage all those years ago were photographers like Nadar did not have the advantage of digital and computer technology.   If I was to reproduce in the style of Nadar I would use the technology of software such as Photoshop to enhance the image.  People aren't grey. Skies are not black or grey or white.  You have to consider that.

Focusing deep into this image you get the feeling that there’s a story behind this photograph, it’s like you want to be inside her head and think what she’s visualising, the reason behind it is because she's not looking directly at the camera, she's focusing on something else. Looking at the corners of the photo, it seems like it has been scratched or burnt in some sort of way, which clearly gives the image a very old vintage effect and from there we can roughly say how old the image could be. It gives you the feeling of the portrait been under the ray of sunlight for a long period of time. However the other thing that makes the photograph look old is the actress’s hair style and the type of blanket she’s got wrapped around her. It doesn’t look very attractive in comparison to what we have in the twenty first century.

As you first look at the image, you catch the actress eyes however her focus is on something else which makes you want to investigate what she’s looking at.  then you start to look at what she’s got on round her body, and it make you wonder has she got any clothes on beneath the blanket, is the room temperature not at the right level and why is she leaning on a wooden cabinet, has she maybe been making love? You as the viewer start to ask yourself a whole load of weird questions that you can’t answer about the portrait.

There are not many symbols used in this image but the only one I see on this image is the ring on her finger which represents she must be married, you can’t really see the ring in detail until you focus right into the photograph. The hidden meaning behind this portrait is one of intrigue why use a blanket was this staged or taken at her house?  You could imagine she has just gotten out of bed and covered herself up. Looking at her eyes, they looked relaxed. Is this staged to look sensuous?  The artist leaves the interpretation up to you as the viewer. Other viewers might look at the image and interpret it totally different to my personal summarisation but as a young male this is the impression I get.

Although there is a title to on the picture but I can’t read the message the artist is trying to get through to the viewer. I personally think it might be the artist’s signature.

The important thing about the colour in this image is that it’s in black and white, thinking about black and white photography and the time the portrait had been taken, photographers didn’t have the advantage of digital photography compared to what we have today. The advantage over the past photographers, for example we have cameras that take pictures with which show every small detail on a person’s portrait. As the image is black and white, you can’t really see the light shades on each folded bits of the blanket. However people are not grey coloured so I think us as the viewer would’ve got more detail about the person if it was done in colour, we can’t really see whether the actress is mixed race or Caucasian. Not many Caucasian’s have curly hair.

What I like about the image is that Nadar shown the light from one side of the person, but I don’t think they would’ve had any photography lights to use at the time, so I think he might’ve used a natural day light. But the shadow that’s created behind her neck and in every bend of the blanket gives more detail on the image and the person’s face

It’s such an old image that you can’t really see the space it’s been presented in, it’s black and white and the person looks gray but the artist has used rule of thirds to capture the image. The effect that has been created by using this rule is that it puts the person’s body on one side of the image, face been in the middle of the photograph, which is the most important thing about a portrait Although around the person there’s a lot of negative space but I personally think that’s part of portraiture because you’re trying to show the person not what’s around them.

Nadar has used some kind of cloth material to cover the body of the person up with but photos been in black and white and the camera’s not been as good as what we get today, I think he was trying to show the actress’s face and shoulders  more, because our eye always are attracted to bare skin. Using the folds in the material gives some depth to the image while focusing the viewer on the actresses face and shoulders. Although it looks old material it appears to have a richness to it. I think using different textures and colours in old black and white photography were necessary to enhance the images.