Le Geant, Champ de Mars

Nadar, October 18, 1863, probably printed 1880/89

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Artist: Nadar (French, 1820–1910)
Medium: Gelatin silver printing out paper print
Size: Image/paper: 17.1 × 16.5 cm (6 3/4 × 6 1/2 in.); First mount: 18.8 × 18.4 cm (7 7/16 × 7 1/4 in.); Second mount: 33 × 24.2 cm (13 × 9 9/16 in.)
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

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.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0.