Félix Nadar: Crypt nr. 1

"Sicut Unda, Dies Nostri Fluxerunt" (Like the wave, our days have passed) can be read above the water source, (la fontaine de la Samaritaine). According to Nadar, the underground water source contained some blind fish.

The sixty or so photographs taken by Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (dit Nadar) in the Paris catacombs in 1862 are the most spectacular use of his 1861 patent for artificial light photography which he had been experimenting since 1859.
Nadar worked with the electric regulator invented by Victor Serrin, activated by a fifty-element Bunsen battery. (Sylvie Aubenas, 2018)
Despite this artificial light, exposures of 18 minutes were required.

The accidental marks of emulsion during exposure - notable clues to the photochemical basis of the wet [collodion] process - produce evasive, vaporous shapes on the prints. Also clearly visible on this example.
The blurring formlessness of such images exacerbates the sense of uncertainty and sublimity induced by the dense darkness in the underground. The imperfectly fixed image testifies to the historicity and materiality of the photographic medium and places the image at the borderline between the real and the fantastic (Shao-Chien Tseng, 2014). The electric cable for the Bunsen battery was retouched in this print.

Nadar exhibited his photographs of the catacombs several times after 1862 and even included them in the decoration of successive workshops right until the turn of the twentieth century, as emblematic of a heroic phase of his career. (Aubenas, 2008). The rare CDV is an example of the use of these fascinating images. The photographs were also displayed at the photography exhibition in the Palais de l'Industrie in 1863.
This image is published by Paul Nadar in Paris-Photographe, 1893, p. 292, see last image from the Rijksmuseum (for reference only).

Albumen print is mounted on cardboard. Traces of use and age. Pin holes in every corner of the cardboard.

Albumen print ca. 23,4 x 18,1 cm
Mount ca. 26,8 x 20,5 cm
ca. 1865

Literature :
- Philippe Néagu et divers, Le Paris souterrain de Félix Nadar 1861 : des os et des eaux, Paris, C.N.M.H.S., 1982, p. 34, ill. 42.
- Sylvie Aubenas, Catacombes. Nadar au royaume des morts, L’Oeil Curieux, Paris, 2018, p. 10.

A slightly different print is in the collection of BnF, Paris.