Félix Nadar (1820-1910) - Lot 4

Félix Nadar (1820-1910) Paris sewers, 1865. Rue du Château d'Eau, no. 2. Pont-au-Change room. Three (3) albumen prints from collodion glass negatives. Sizes: 19.5 x 22.3 to 25 x 20 cm Nadar's patenting of artificial lighting for photography in 1861 opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Responding to the suggestion of Ernest Lamé-Fleury, a mining engineer and Quarry Inspector, he descended into the catacombs in 1862, then into the sewers in 1865. The undertaking was as much technical as symbolic. Capturing the bowels of the Haussmann city at the very moment it was being transformed on the surface meant making this underground modernization a subject in its own right.