Currently a portrait photographer myself, I found a strong sense of connection with Nadar´s ideas on portraiture. As I browsed past portrait photographers like Julia Margaret Cameron, I settled on Felix because of how he focused on the essential characteristics of his sitters. This quote of his from his later years is a great example of how strongly he believed in establishjing an almost esoterical connection with his subjects.

“What can [not] be learned […] is the moral intelligence of your subject; it’s the swift tact that puts you in communion with the model, makes you size him up, grasp his habits and ideas in accordance with his character, and allows you to render, not an indifferent plastic reproduction that could be made by the lowliest laboratory worker, commonplace and accidental, but the resemblance that is most familiar and most favorable, the intimate resemblance.” – Felix Nadar