[Leica] [Fwd: Famous Leica self-portrait (was Leitz 50mm b/l v/f)]

[alaxsxaq at gmail.com (Glenn Stauffer)]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 10:21:50 -0500 (GMT-05:00), Phong
<phongdoan@mindspring.com> wrote:
> B.D. is correct about this iconic LIFE photo
> ("The Photojournalist") of Dennis Stock by Andreas Feininger:
>  http://www.gallerym.com/work.cfm?ID=176
> 

Indeed, B.D, is correct.  Feininger doesn't reveal anything about the
photo in the 'Total Picture Control' book and the first search I
turned up perpetuated the 'self-portrait' myth.

>From Smithsonian Magazine:

But there is no picture by him more historic than a picture of him?a
1951 portrait by Andreas Feininger. ... He was a staff photographer
for Life, and took Stock's picture after Stock won the magazine's
young-photographers contest. It remains a seminal mid-century image,
ranked by the Fahey/Klein Gallery in New York, for instance, as one of
the top 70 photographs ever reproduced ... Many viewers assumed that
Feininger's picture, originally titled The Photojournalist, is a
self-portrait. (Years later, the title would sometimes carry Stock's
name.) Stock says the photograph, in which the camera's lens and
viewfinder replace the subject's eyes, captured a common feeling of
the time, that human beings and technology were merging. It also
succeeds, he quips, because "I'm not so good-looking that someone
should do a full portrait of me."

The camera is a Leica IIIc (could be a IIIf, I guess) with a 50mm
Summitar and a Tewe viewfinder.

--Glenn