World's First Aerial Photographer

Nadar had worked to combine his ballooning skills with his photographic interest for several years, but he was constantly frustrated in his efforts by gas escaping from the balloon and caking the collodion on his photographic plates. Dozens of times he attempted to make an aerial photograph, struggling to coat and develop his plates in a makeshift darkroom while he floated at dizzying heights over Paris.
It was not until 1858 that he achieved his first success. Hovering at an altitude of 520 meters (1,600 feet), he captured the world's first view of a city from the air and the distinction of being the world's first aerial photographer.

One of his admirers, Honore Daumier, was so delighted with Nadar's achievement that he produced an amusing cartoon to mark the occasion: "Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art." Nadar was only mildly amused. "There is," he once said, "no such thing as art photography. . . . There are only people who know how to see and others who don't even know how to look."

To the modern traveler, accustomed to observing the earth from the highflying altitudes of today's jet aircraft, Nadar's view of Paris may seem somewhat mundane. But among people of the mid-nineteenth century, most of whom had never viewed the world from anything higher than a treetop, this panorama of one of the great capitals created a sensation. It offered a bird's-eye view of a city that held a romantic fascination for its earthbound citizens - and for tens of thousands more around the world, who merely fantasized about the city that even then was admired as one of the most glamorous in Europe.

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