Art Institute of Chicago

Le Geant, Champ de Mars

Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon)LinkedCulture matchlcp-b70b8fe59795

Date

October 18, 1863, probably printed 1880/89

Medium

Gelatin silver printing out paper print

Culture

France

Department

Photography and Media

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Object ID

92202

During the reign of Napoleon III (1852–70), Nadar cultivated an illustrious career as a writer, caricaturist, and, most notably, photographer, producing arresting portraits of his renowned friends and contemporaries. He was also an enthusiastic balloonist, an obsession that led him to construct the largest hot air balloon the world had seen and make the first aerial photographs in 1858. Viewing the Earth's surface from above, he wrote, "reduces all things to their relative proportions—to the Truth." Nadar's first flight aboard his balloon Géant (Giant) on October 4, 1863, was a great success. On the second launch, however, the balloon eventually crashed in Hanover, leaving Nadar with a fractured leg. This photograph of that launch establishes the sheer size of the balloon—which was made with 20,000 meters of silk and carried 80 passengers in a two-story basket—by juxtaposing it with the crowd of 200,000 who have come to watch it.

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