[Leica] Early Leica Books

[profmason at yahoo.com (John Mason)]

Comrades, several weeks ago, I mentioned that I?d
stumbled across a copy of Sports Shots: Dr. Paul
Wolff?s Leica in a used bookstore.

Published in 1937 by Wm. Morrow & Co., the book is
collection of photos from the previous year?s Olympic
games.  It?s an admirable book in many ways.  Wolff
and his assistant produced a wide variety of
photos--panoramas and close-ups, athletes and
spectators--all of them nicely rendered.

Wolff begins opens the book with an essay about the
advantages of the miniature camera.  He?s clearly
addressing people, including most professional
photographers, who still needed to be convinced that
35mm cameras were something other than rich men?s
toys.

He talks about his lenses--everything from an Elmar
2.8cm to a Telyt 20cm--and anticipates the tools of
the modern sports shooter.  He says that if ?Oscar
Bernack were still alive...? he would ?ask him to make
a still longer objective for my camera--forty, no,
sixty cm....  ...that is the length that size of a
modern sports stadium requires.?

This was, alas, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  It?s
disconcerting (to say the least) to turn the page and
be confronted with a photo of the crowd greeting the
entrance into the stadium of the Olympic flame with
the Nazi salute or, even worse, with the an image of
Adolph Hitler embracing the torch bearer.

Well, all this made me curious about Paul Wolff.  He
was, I discovered, a German commercial photographer,
one of the very first working professionals to embrace
the miniature camera.  He was also one of Leica?s
great evangelists, publishing a number of
books--translated into several languages--in which he
attempted to demonstrate to a skeptical public that
35mm negatives could produce fine photographs.

Just the other day, I found a copy of Wolff?s My First
Ten Years with the Leica, translated by H.W. Zwieler,
and published in New York in 1935 by the B. Westermann
Co.  This is, I believe, the first Leica book
published in English that is not a product list,
manual, or promotional material.  (Leitz and others
had published such items in English.)

The book contains 192 photos, beautifully reproduced
from screen halftones made directly from negatives,
not prints.  Once again, the photos are nicely
done--carefully composed and exposed, with generally
pleasing results.  While no one would claim that Wolff
ranks with the great photographers of his era (Kertesz
he is not), he was certainly highly skilled.

To me, the most interesting parts of the book are the
introductory essays in which Wolff elaborates, at
length and with many practical suggestions, on his
contention that ?He who wishes to do Leica photography
successfully must be willing to free himself from
established traditional customs and must learn to
think... in terms of an entirely new photographic
method.?

The photos in the book suggest that Wolff was indeed
on his way to developing that ?new photographic
method.?  Many of the photos simply could not have
been made with a larger format camera.  On the other
hand, the photos only hint at the ways in which the
likes of HC-B, Klein, and Winogrand would make the
Leica sing.

Nevertheless, My First Ten Years with a Leica would
make a terrific addition to any bookshelf.  Copies of
are relatively easy to find.

Cheers, John
-------------------------
J Mason
Charlottesville, Virginia


        
                
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