Charles Baudelaire
シャルル・ボードレール
- Birth Year
- 1820
- Death Year
- 1910
- Date
- ca. 1856 (reprinted in 1978)
- Technique, Material, Format
- salted paper
- Dimension
- 27.0 x 21.0 cm
- Category
- Photograph or Moving Image by ForeignPhotographer/Artist
- Inventory Number
- 85-PHF-054-06
Having made a name for himself as a caricaturist in Paris, Nadar turned his attention to the new medium of photography, which had started to emerge in the mid-19th century, and became a portrait photographer. His photographic portraits, which retained traditional painted portraiture’s reverence for their subjects while also capturing facial expressions with a realism that only photography could achieve, quickly became popular. Artists and celebrities from all walks of life beat a track to his studio door hoping to have their portraits made.
The subject here is Charles Baudelaire, the greatest poet and art critic of his time, and a friend of the photographer. Clear to see are the pride and even a glimpse of the loneliness of a subject who was the target of much public derision, but who also took pride in his rebelliousness and dandyism.
(MATSUNAGA Shintaro)