[Draped Standing Nude], Nadar, France, 1850–1910

The legendary Nadar had many faces: journalist, bohemian, left-wing agitator, playwright, caricaturist, and aeronaut. Gaspard-Félix Tournachon was born in April 1820 in Paris. His father was a printer and bookseller. Nadar began to work as a caricaturist and novelist and became a member of a Parisian Boheme. His friends picked a nickname for him: Tournadar, which later became Nadar. Early in 1854, a banker friend proposed Nadar to engage in a portrait photography business. The new collodion-on-glass negatives produced portraits as sharp as daguerreotypes, but more easily and in multiple copies. In 1854 he opened a photographic studio at 113 rue St. Lazare. Portrait photography was going through a period of rapid change, and Nadar preferred natural daylight. In 1886 he did what may be the first photo-report. Nadar’s atelier attracted the bourgeois clientele of the boulevard. In 1858, he became the first person to take aerial photographs. He was thus the first person to photograph from the air with his balloons, as well as the first to photograph underground, in the Catacombs of Paris. In 1867, he published the first magazine to focus on air travel: L'Aéronaute. In 1863, Nadar commissioned the prominent balloonist Eugène Godard to construct an enormous balloon, 60 metres (196 ft) high and with a capacity of 6,000 m3 (210,000 cu ft), and named Le Géant (The Giant) that later inspired Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon. Nadar was also the inspiration for the character of Michael Ardan in Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. In 1862, Jules Verne and Nadar established a Société pour la recherche de la navigation aérienne, which later became La Société d'encouragement de la locomotion aérienne au moyen du plus lourd que l'air (The Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier than Air Machines). He photographed underground with artificial light, encouraged the development of aerial navigation, and flew the biggest balloon ever built, the Géant. Nadar died in 1910, aged 89. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Erotic photography dates back to the early days of photography in the 19th century. There were a number of photographers who specialized in producing erotic images in the 19th century, including Félicien Rops, Édouard-Henri Avril, and Alphonse Eugène Lumière. These photographers often used allegorical or symbolic imagery to depict sexual themes, as overt displays of sexuality were not socially acceptable at the time. Félicien Rops was a Belgian artist who produced a number of highly stylized and provocative images featuring women in various states of undress. These images were popular with collectors and were widely exhibited in galleries and salons. Édouard-Henri Avril was a French photographer who produced a series of highly stylized and erotic images featuring women in various states of undress. These images were popular with collectors and were widely exhibited in galleries and salons. Alphonse Eugène Lumière was a French photographer who produced a number of erotic photographs, many of which featured his wife, Bibi, as the model. Lumière's photographs were known for their playful and lighthearted approach to sexuality and were widely exhibited in galleries and salons. In the 1920s, Adolfo Camarillo, a Mexican photographer, produced a series of highly stylized and provocative images featuring women in various states of undress. These images were popular with collectors and were widely exhibited in galleries and salons. Jacques-Henri Lartigue was a French photographer who produced a number of erotic photographs, many of which featured his wife, Bibi, as the model. Lartigue's photographs were known for their playful and lighthearted approach to sexuality and were widely exhibited in galleries and salons. Alfred Stieglitz is also known for his photographs of nudes. Stieglitz's photographs of nudes are notable for their honesty and their ability to capture the beauty and complexity of the human form. It is not uncommon for image recognition software to make errors or have difficulty accurately identifying the subjects of a photograph. We are doing our best to remove false-positive results, but some of the images in this collection may not be "erotic photographs" but they sure look as such to AI vision algorithms.