Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/05/26

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Subject: [Leica] An extraordinary collection of 40's Leica images
From: nathan.wajsman at planet.nl (Nathan Wajsman)
Date: Thu May 26 21:24:01 2005
References: <00c501c56153$4bdbe810$6401a8c0@hal>

I have been looking at these on and off, since the newspaper in 
question--Politiken--is Denmark's leading quality daily, and I read it 
on the web almost every day.

The photographer in question, Erik Petersen, died in 1997. The films 
were found in a box only recently--apparently there were about 700 rolls 
of negatives which had never been printed. It is not clear whether they 
were developed or not--in one place it says that the film was developed 
after its discovery, i.e. recently, in another article (Petersen's bio) 
they say that what was found were negatives, already developed. In any 
event, Petersen worked as a photographer for Politiken from 1939 until 
he retired in 1994.

Since Politiken is a major newspaper, it is safe to assume that they 
have access to the best resources when it comes to processing, scanning 
and photoshopping. Besides publishing the newspaper, the company is also 
a major publisher of books, so I am sure that at some point these photos 
(or at least some of them) will appear as a book. Right now they have 
them on the web site and are inviting people to write comments 
identifying the location, the people etc.--quite a few already have. 
There is also some question about the times; according to the posted 
comments, some of the pictures may be from as late as the early 1950s. 
Clearly, they span the post-Liberation period, since for example 
Montgomery made his triumphant visit to Copenhagen on 12th May 1945.

The paper's web site does not say anything about camera or film used, 
except that it mentions "rolls of film". Given that there are no square 
pictures, these are almost certainly 35mm film; it does not say what 
camera he used, but again, given that he was employed at Politiken from 
1939 it is safe to assume that he used the best equipment available at 
the time, and that was Leica.

POSTSCRIPT: A selection of these images (117, to be exact) were 
published as a book on 4th May this year to coincide with the 60th 
anniversary of the liberation of Denmark. For those who are prepared to 
decipher Danish, the link to buy the book is:
http://politiken.dk/VisArtikel.asp?PageID=376685
For those who visit Copenhagen, they have an exhibition in Politiken's 
building on R?dhuspladsen, the big square in front of the city hall.

Nathan

Chandos Michael Brown wrote:

> Someone in the Photonet Leica forum posted a link to the following site:
> 
> http://politiken.dk/VisArtikel.asp?PageID=375480&nr=1
> 
> Evidently these are images exposed in Copenhagen during the war years,
> but only recently processed and scanned.
> 
> The discussion here:
> 
> http://www.leica-camera.com/discus_e/messages/2/135679.html?1117037412
> 
> suggests that all of these images were made with a Barnack Leica and a
> 50mm lens.  
> 
> In the event, whether he made them with a IIIc or a No. 1 Kodak Pocket
> Special doesn't matter.  He was one hell of a photographer.  I urge all
> of you to have a look at these; simply amazing! 
> 
> Chandos
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> 
> 

-- 
Nathan Wajsman
Almere, The Netherlands

General photography: http://www.nathanfoto.com
Seville photography: http://www.fotosevilla.com
Stock photography: http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=wajsman
http://myloupe.com/home/found_photographer.php?photographer=507
Prints for sale: http://www.photodeluge.com



Replies: Reply from feli2 at earthlink.net (Feli) ([Leica] An extraordinary collection of 40's Leica images)
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