[Leica] Back and beginning to "recover"

[firkin at ncable.net.au (Alastair Firkin)]

G'day all,

Helen and I have been home long enough for most people to catch up, but 
we are almost there. So this post has a number of roles:

1. It is with great sadness that I have to report that the FOM2 project 
has lost another of its finest photographers. On the 3rd of May, Dieter 
W. Wehde died after a long fight with lung cancer. Dieter was one 
lugger/fom2 friend on whom I had learnt to rely, and when I heard about 
his illness, I was determined to go to Hamburg to meet him. Of course I 
arrived in Hamburg 2 weeks too late. I heard about his death as we left 
Prague, and it put a gloom on some of our trip.

2. I have to admit to NOT being a great salesman or success in finding 
outlets for FOM2. We visited the Leica Gallery in Prague and saw a 
wonderful Salgado exhibition (workers). The gallery is housed on a 
train, and it chugged off 6 hours later. Ringing the gallery owner was 
inhibited by "language". So it was off to Poland and then Germany. We 
rang Leica, who could not find a time for the tour. With this, a visit 
to Solms seemed a bit pointless, so we decided the projects fate would 
have to rest on other formats. It is clear the galleries are small in 
general.

3. We were welcomed to Poland and guided onto buses trains etc by 
Stanislaw. I cannot thank him enough for his help. We had a wonderful 
time in Krakow: a city on the must visit list. LUG contacts do make 
travel fun ;-)

I have now processed the 20 rolls of Rollei R3 and 5 rolls of other 
"assorted" b/w films, and will begin printing this weekend.

So little time so much to do: but its good to be back.

Hope you have all been busy on FOM2 ;-)

Cheers



Alastair