Neither the owners nor the auctioneers, and may not your satisfied customer, suspect that the Leica (leica cameras) in 1923 auctioned on Saturday in Vienna brushed against the 2.2 million euros. The starting price for small and rusty Leica O-Series (No. 116) went for 300,000 euros. The most optimistic estimates pointed to could sell between 600,000 and 800,000. But ultimately projections tripled and reached 2,160,000 euros, including taxes.It is almost double what was paid before a camera of this type and demonstrates the growing interest in the auction rooms both for photography, pioneer or not, for the German cameras have allowed for the history of twentieth century . The photo side of the story is an image taken by Andreas Gursky Rihn in 1999, which was paid 3.2 million euros in 2011. Beat a self-portrait by Cindy Sherman which was paid 2.8 million euros the same year.
Since its emergence the market in the late twenties the compact Leica that currently exists in the auction, became the undisputed queen of the cameras. For she bet the great masters of genre, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who purchased the first in 1932 and whose contribution record is in the 433,000 euros for a photo of that year. It was also the tool of choice for photographers uncivil war from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam.Leica camera was Robert Capa in Cerro Muriano in the Allied landing in Normandy and in Indochina. The Leica Robert Doisneau archifamoso caught his kiss to the city council of Paris, and Elliot Erwitt and William Klein New York sifted through his viewfinder. A Leica caught the terrified Vietnamese girl fleeing napalm and burned by the U.S. and Leica camera has been used by Brazilian Sebastiao Salgado, one of the last giants of analogue photography.
The previous world record for a Leica oldest series was established in 2011, with 1,320,000 euros paid by a Leica O-Series (No. 117), ‘sister’ of the auction sold on Friday and also in Vienna by the Westlicht Gallery, one of the most reputable in the world in the field of photography, directed by Peter Coeln. As usual in the world of art auction, the buyer remained anonymous.
In 2007, the first Leica O-Series (No. 107) also auctioned by the gallery Westlicht, sold for 336,000 euros, only a third of the record set on Saturday, which is more than € 800,000 the previous one. Only 25 prototypes were manufactured by Leica, before giving way to mass production two years later, in 1925. Only 12 of them are listed worldwide.
Revolutionary
The Leica was the first compact camera with 35 mm film and its contribution has been decisive stand the history of photography and photojournalism. The first prototypes were built in 1913 by Oskar Barnack in his laboratory E. Optische Werke Leitz in the German town of Wetzlar, north of Frankfurt. Barnack pioneered the use of 35 mm film, the standard film, but expanded the image size up to 24×36 mm.
True to its motto “small negative, large images,” chose an aspect ratio of 2:3, with a capacity of 36 exposures per roll, a format popularized in force until the advent of digital photography. This revolutionary concept was developed when Barnack convinced his boss, Ernst Leitz II, to manufacture a series of prototypes in 1923. Some cameras, to everyone’s surprise, soon became an object of desire for professionals and correspondents who had guerra.Y is conceived as mere mechanisms to test the objectives developed by the German optical microscopes and specialized other precision instruments.
In 1925 the compact Leica became a success, after his presentation at the fair in Leipzig. The first units were sold under the name of Leica I, short for Leitz Camera. Its aim Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 brightness and a was designed by Max Berek at Leitz. The design of four elements, influenced by the Zeiss Tessar lens, and was one of the reasons for the resounding success of the chamber and its compact size and reliability. The shutter curtain, too revolutionary, had a range of 1/20 to 1/500 of a second, and placed in position of a ‘Z’ by the word ‘Zeit’, time in German).
There was no past or a decade of the first prototypes appeared in 1930 when I Schraubgewinde with a Leica interchangeable lens system based on a 39 mm mount.Opened the era of interchangeable lens, another revolution in the world of photographic optics, as you could toggle the 50 mm lens with a wide angle 35 mm and 135 mm telephoto.
A Leica middle of last century would another giant step with the appearance of the model M3 with bayonet mount, and considered as a design miracle for its combination of its simple appearance and great flexibility. Undisputed world leader in the field of photography with models M5 and M6, Leica suffered a severe downturn, first with the arrival of big Japanese brands and then with the popularization of digital photography. A few setbacks that have been recovered in recent years to adapt its legendary models to the digital jungle.
Today is divided into three companies: Leica Camera AG, Leica Geosystems and Leica Microsystems AG engaged in producing cameras, surveying equipment and medical equipment or processes ptrecisión histological microscopy.