Volume 24, Number 12 · July 14, 1977
The Romantic Camera
By V.S. Pritchett
Nadar
by Nigel Gosling
Knopf, 298 pp., $25.00
Everyone who has dabbled in the lives of Balzac, Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, George Sand, Zola, or almost any minor or major celebrity of the French nineteenth century has taken his view of their personal appearance from the photographs, constantly reproduced, by Nadar. And possibly without knowing that this Bohemian genius was one of the dramatic princes of photography during his long life. Our ignorance is now remedied by Nigel Gosling in a lavish, exhaustive, and very well written book which contains not only scores of Nadar's portraits, long essays on his life, on his diverting character, and on his work with the camera and in the darkroom, but—since the nature of his sitters meant everything to him—also short and witty comments on their careers. Post-1830 Paris comes to life, Gosling's scholarship is telling and delightful, and his book is one of the very few works on photography with a knowledgeable text that is quite distinct from the merely decorative letter-press in tasty prose that we are usually given.
Review, 1706 words
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