[Leica] Avedon, origins, and the like: was Light leak in M6?

[Chandos Michael Brown <cmbrow@mail.wm.edu>]

Fair enough, but I was 17 yrs old at the time--for all I knew Avedon used a 
Zenit B.  I did know the look I wanted (and it didn't help to have recently 
seen -Blowup-, which forever shaped my notions, together with 
Costa-Gravas'  -Z-, of how a proper photographer behaved ).  What can I 
say?  In those innocent days photography hadn't yet for me become  a 
*discipline*; it was more a late adolescent fantasy of a lifestyle.  I can 
still remember the first serious book of photographs I ever spent time 
with: -Sander Menschen-, at about the same time.  I worked in a good camera 
store when I was in highschool, the youngest by decades of any of the 
employees.  Irv Baer, a very serious collector of Leicas (this in the late 
60s) persuaded me that if I were going to take up photography, then I 
shouldn't have the luxury ever of blaming the gear for my own 
inadequacies.  I bought the Nikon F at the substantial discount that EPOI 
offered to camera store employees.  A year later, in some elaborate deal 
Irv worked out in trading some of his own Leica stuff with our Leica rep, I 
came into a M3 DS with a Summarit for the then princely sum of $175.  I 
haven't used an SLR as a principal camera since.

I'm interested to know about Avedon.  I'm not sure that I ever knew much 
about his actual technique.

Chandos

At 01:38 PM 7/8/1999 -0700, you wrote:
>vedon a "main man" of mine has a distinction of having completely
>avoided 35mm throughout his long incredibly distinguished career.
>Had always used a Rolleiflex sometimes a Hasselblad with a 150 but for
>the past decade an 8 by 10 point and shoot(in effect).



Chandos Michael Brown
Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies
College of William and Mary

http:www.wm.edu/CAS/ASP/faculty/brown