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Daughter of a new century

"I believe that there were two main factors that hastened the advent of modern photography. The first of these was a decided change of the times that followed immediately after the war. Modern art had come into its own, modern architecture was announcing a new shell for the new life as different as the skyscraper was from the classical Gothic cathedral... Radio replaced the old phonograph... and as for women: the hand that rocked the cradle now steers the car and the old modest blush now became frank rouge with lips that smoked a cigarette on the street... The other factor was a piece of engineering. A small camera was introduced to the world in the year 1925. To many of the old photographers it looked like a toy designed for a lady's handbag. But on closer examination it bore all the evidence of a keen precision instrument designed and manufactured by the ablest technicians of a world-famous microscope company...this camera [was] an instrument of modern expression that dealt the final blow to the old 'imitation art' school of photography. This camera was the Leica!"

(Manuel Komroff in The Leica Manual, by Williard D. Morgan and Henry M. Lester, Morgan & Lester Publishers, New York, 1938)


Leica I, Model A #771 (1929) shown with instruction book and catalog.

Witness to History

Since the first Leica was created in 1913 by Oskar Barnack, its small size, mechanical precision, and marvelous optics immediately made it the preferred camera of choice for professional photographers as well as demanding amateurs. Because of the Leica, the first handheld camera in the world, almost no event of the twentieth century escaped the lens of a Leica. And the same is true today.

Here is a visual representation of this story. It is the story of the invention and the nearly one-hundred-year development of the Leica camera system. Through this astonishing photographic instrument, great photographers like Paul Wolff, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gisèle Freund, Sebastião Salgado, Robert Capa, and Elliott Erwitt, plus countless others have given us a distinct view of the lives and cultures around us. The mainstream and unique Leica models are presented along with relevant historical explanations and technical data.

From the image of the flood in the city of Wetzlar in 1920 (perhaps the first work of photojournalism) to images of today, the Leica has been a constant witness to the history taking place before our eyes.


The Wetzlar Flood of 1920, as photographed by Oskar Barnack

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1908-2004