[Leica] Karen Nakamura speech

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

I have admired Karen Nakamura's enthusiasm for photography and her academic
work for a number of years. But it is apparent that she didn't write the
historical perspective in the first paragraph of the press release.
Photographic archeological and anthropological studies were carried out
using plate and roll film cameras nearly a quarter century before the Leica
was invented. Folding cameras using roll film were marketed in the 1890s,
freeing photographers from the necessity of carrying plates. Amundsen
photographed the Sooth Pole with a Kodak folding camera in 1912, the year
before Barnack built the first Leica.


The Leica wasn't even the first 35mm camera. There were many others. The
first actually on the market was the American Tourist Multiple which carried
enough film for 750 1/2 frame exposures. It was advertised a being suitable
to record a complete European tour. Unfortunately the camera appeared in
1913 and WW1 effectively killed the market for it. The Leica was first
widely sold in 1925.


Karen knows far too much about photographic history to have written that
material. So should members of the NYLUG.


>From the NYLUG:

"The invention of the first Leica camera in 1913 ushered in new

>  possibilities for naturalistic photography. Heavy tripod-mounted

>  wooden cameras could be replaced by Oskar Barnack?s pocketable little

>  brass wonder.  Dozens of bulky film plates could be exchanged for a

>  single interchangeable film cartridge.  New vistas for street and

>  field photography were opened up. Anthropologists were early adopters

>  of this technology to bring back images from across the world. It is

>  remarkable that almost a hundred years later we are still using the

>  same film in much the same film cartridge that Oskar Barnack

>  originally developed."


Larry Z