Philosophy of Art

Lessons from Oskar Barnack: Or, the Story of my Leica IIIa

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Note: This essay was originally written for the fine folks at Frozen Wasteland and can be found here in a fuller form.

I was recently approached by Andrew McClees, aka @andrewdmcclees of Instagram fame, to write an article for Frozen Wasteland on the topic of things we have learned from shooting a specific camera, a lens, a film stock, whatever. I agreed (obviously) and decided that I would try and talk about the most important camera from the panoply of different cameras that I’ve used over the years. 

My ever-changing collection has shuffled through the gamut of numerous digital cameras, 35mm film cameras and medium format film cameras. To be fair each of them has had something to teach me. Shooting a heavy RB67 from a tripod teaches you something about a slow, considered, and contemplative approach to photography. Shooting a small, lightweight digital setup teaches you something about shooting on the fly, in the moment, etc.. In that sense every one of my cameras could probably serve as source material for an essay on the way that any particular photographic tool has something to teach about the many sides of the photographic process. 

However there is one camera that immediately comes to the fore as the most significant. That camera was a Leica IIIa, as well as the Leica 50mm f/3.5 Elmar that was paired with it. I came to possess this camera in a roundabout way from a familiar lust that I would guess many photographers have felt before. Stated simply, I wanted a Leica. Well, actually I had been curious about experimenting with the rangefinder format for some time and had already experimented with a Canonet and found it interesting enough to pursue further. But of course, as we all know, the ultimate conclusion when you want a serious rangefinder is that you need a Leica, specifically a Leica M. 

This was all well and good except for one critical problem: I didn’t have the money for a Leica M. Prices on used film M’s were already crazy even two years ago and the more I searched for one the more I came to realize that an M probably wasn’t going to be an option. It was at this point during my quest for M alternatives that I stumbled upon the interesting world of Barnack Leicas. 

For those that are in the same boat I was the history lesson is as follows: 

The “Barnack Leica” is really just an umbrella term used to denote the large family of screw-mount Leica cameras made prior to the first Leica M in 1954. They are collectively referred to as “Barnack Leicas” because they all share a fairly consistent mechanical heritage which leads back to the Ur-Leica (this is what they call it, it’s German), the foundational camera invented by Oskar Barnack in 1913. 

The Ur-Leica was developed as a light, compact and easily portable alternative to the bulkier camera equipment of the early 20th century. It utilized a small negative made from modified movie film which, when paired with capable Leitz optics, was able to produce a sufficiently sharp enlargement that rivaled the technology of its time at a fraction of the size. 35mm photography was born. A polished version of Barnack’s brainchild was introduced to the public as the Leica I in 1925. This was followed by a number of developments over the next 30 years: the Leica Standard in 1932, the Leica II which integrated a rangefinder, also in 1932, and finally the Leica III which integrated slow shutter speeds in 1933. The last Barnack Leica produced was the IIIg in 1956, and the reign of the Barnack Leicas came to an end in 1960. 

Following the genetic heritage of the Ur-Leica, Barnack Leicas have always been a relatively simple camera. At bottom they are a brass box with a viewfinder, a screw-on lens, and a shutter. Even the later Leica II and III merely added an expanded range of shutter speeds and a rangefinder focusing mechanism for additional focusing accuracy. I will admit that these cameras were a far cry from my original quest for a Leica M. But the more I read about these fascinating old cameras the more I was intrigued about the prospect of using one, and the fact that they were much cheaper didn’t hurt either. And I mean, it was still a Leica after all. 

A lot of deliberation and scouring of the internet later I eventually came across the Leica IIIa + Leica 50mm f/3.5 Elmar combo that would come to be mine for sale from a Leica store in San Francisco (pro-tip: look at the used section of the various Leica stores around the US for some good deals). The camera and lens were in great shape and while the price was a bit higher than I was looking to spend it was less than buying an M and an additional lens. The condition of the pair and the fact that it was coming from a legitimate Leica store took some of the edge off of the premium as well. So, I sent Leica my money and waited eagerly for my old-but-new-to-me Barnack Leica. 

Fast forward through several days of waiting and I finally got my hands on the Leica IIIa. I was immediately smitten. Unwrapping the copious bubble wrap revealed the beautiful, hefty, compact brass body, knurled advance knob, shutter speed dials, and film rewind knob, all in that beautiful Leica chromed brass. The collapsible 50mm Elmar, while undoubtedly funny looking, also had its own antique kind of charm. 

Aesthetics aside there was a beautiful tactile quality to the camera as well. Advancing the film/cocking the shutter involved turning the large knurled knob several times until the film had been advanced and the shutter was cocked. Setting the shutter speed involved lifting the speed dial slightly to be able to rotate it to the desired speed. Framing and making an image involved looking into two separate windows: a tiny peephole of a viewfinder which showed a 50mm field of view, and another window through which you could use the rangefinder focusing mechanism to achieve focus. And of course releasing the shutter elicited a responsive click and that ever-satisfying sound of the Leica cloth shutter. 

There was a decidedly non-modern, even spartan simplicity to the whole thing paired with a brilliant craftsmanship that I absolutely loved. It was a camera that did everything a camera needed to do, but nothing more, and nothing less. And it fulfilled its function in ways that only the most masterfully crafted tools can, with an efficiency and precision that allows them to function effortlessly and invisibly, as all great tools should. The way that a great pen simply writes, the Leica simply made pictures. As I would eventually find out, this was part and parcel of its deepest capacity to teach.

To be sure, the methodical (some might say cumbersome) process of image making taught the virtues of a slow and considered approach, and the minimalist form factor taught the virtues of working freely, unencumbered by overly complicated equipment. The Leica certainly had technical and practical lessons to offer, but looking back these things, important in their own right, aren’t the distinctive things that the Leica taught me. I had worked with cameras in the past that had taught these and many other lessons in one way or another, but the Leica taught lessons both more subtle and arguably much more important from an artistic point of view than the merely technical or practical aspects of photography. 

To concretize this a bit: wandering through the forest lugging a heavy tripod mounted RB67 or Bronica with ten or fifteen frames of 120 film might have taught me about looking carefully for potential compositions and assembling those compositional elements within a frame to construct a well ordered image. And to be sure this is important technical knowledge. But walking through the same forest with that simple old camera allowed me to more readily lose myself in the rich and meaningful experience of the landscape that had always been the impetus behind my making photos of the landscape and to more easily bring that rich and meaningful Lebenswelt into intimate contact with my photographic endeavors. This was a paradigm shift for me. 

That old Leica, in its quiet simplicity, allowed me the ability to simply walk, to think, to experience, and ultimately to engage in the photographic process in a way that was richer and unencumbered by overmuch technical concern, plunged into the depths of life rather than the lifeless arena of technics. It showed me a way to blend the rich and meaningful content of my experience with my photographic work in a way that previous cameras had, for whatever reason, not. In becoming an invisible component of the rich and meaningful context of my lived experience the Leica enabled me to partake in the photographic process not simply in a detached, technical manner, but in a new, engaged, and more meaningful way deeply in contact with the heart of what mattered to me as a photographer.  

I cannot imagine a more profound lesson that a camera could give to a photographer. The lesson of that old Leica was not about this or that technical or practical aspect of photography, but something that cut to the very heart of what it means to make photographs, something that fundamentally changed how I understood the meaning of photography. So, in the end I didn’t really get what I was looking for in the first place. It would be some time before I even came to own a Leica M. But what I did find in that old Leica IIIa turned out to be valuable beyond anything I could have possibly foreseen, and for that it will always hold a special place for me.

Against the "Good Image" in Favor of Personal Vision

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The Problem with Archetypes

A specter is haunting landscape photography - the specter of Ansel Adams.

- Marx & Engels, probably

Bad variations on The Communist Manifesto aside I want to take some time in this piece to deal with an approach to image making that I find to be alarmingly prevalent as well as what I take to be the problematic aspects of it (or at least it should feel problematic if you care about anything but copy and paste photography).

The approach that I’m talking about is the kind of formulaic approach that seems to be especially prevalent among landscape photographers. You know what I mean, or if you don’t then start paying attention for the following and you’ll start to see it: So much of the landscape photography milieu seems to approach the process of image making the way one might go about building a house. One begins with a blueprint, and then sets about constructing a house on the basis of the framework outlined by the blueprint. A good photograph just becomes that photograph which most closely approximates the “blueprint.”

The blueprint here is what I will call the archetype. More concretely there is an archetype containing the ideal set of properties which comprise the “good landscape image.” This archetype covers everything from subject matter, to lighting, to compositional elements and beyond. All the would-be landscape photographer has to do is assemble their image following the steps delineated by the archetype, and just like that one has themselves a “nice photograph.” These archetypes are largely the collective aesthetic(s) established by the “past masters” of landscape photography. This is also what I mean to imply by the specter of Ansel Adams (to be fair one could substitute Michael Kenna, David Muench, et al to make the same point).

The problematic part of this approach, at least for me personally (a lot of people seem totally happy with this copy and paste approach as far as I can tell), is that these images are more often than not entirely empty as anything other than a recapitulation of the same basic archetype. Have you ever wondered why so much landscape work looks like it could have all been made by some small handful of people? This formulaic approach/the archetype is what leads to the monstrous cliche that is most landscape work. Everyone ends up making the same image because they are all working off the same basic archetype that informs their decisions about what makes a “good image.”

Even more troublesome than this is the fact that this recreation of the archetypal landscape image too often becomes the end in itself. The point of making photographs becomes, well, to make “good photographs,” as defined by the archetypes! Photographs as the end in itself. Rather than any compelling engagement with the subject matter (which many of the greats actually did) and the subsequent creation of genuinely meaningful work that comes from that meaningful engagement with one’s subject matter, we enter a realm in which the sole aim of photography becomes the empty repetition of these archetypes. We are inundated with images which, while certainly technically proficient, say nothing. And this is the deeper problem with the tyranny of the “nice photograph.” It empties photography of its meaningful potential, obliterates the capacity to do meaningful work.

Archetypes: A Personal Story

In the interest of not coming off as completely arrogant and condescending I do want to make it clear that this issue is something that I myself have struggled with off and on over the years, even as recently as, well, currently.

The earliest instances of my own personal struggles with this issue date back to my very first forays into photography. I, like most people that are just picking up a camera and thinking about taking photography seriously, often felt overwhelmed by all the creative decisions surrounding the kind of images I was going to make. I knew that photographing nature was important to me. So I naturally began digesting all of the landscape work that I could find on sites like Flickr, 500px, Instagram, even YouTube, looking for work that I found appealing, inspiring, etc..

And indeed perusing all of this work certainly gave me a kind of aesthetic foothold and helped me have a better idea of the kind of images that I would work on making. And so I did just that. And this “aesthetic foothold” gave me a target to work toward in order to hone my skills and grow as a photographer. But as I kept working it wasn’t too terribly long before I began to feel that something was amiss. To me it began to feel that there wasn’t really anything deeper to the images that I was making outside the project of making images that fit this arbitrary archetype of what I had taken to be a “good landscape image.” They may have been nice photographs but they were essentially meaningless copies of an abstract ideal, devoid of any deeper meaning.

Upon this realization there were two options. I could stay the course or radically rethink my approach to making photographs. Staying the course felt entirely too inauthentic to me, and I chose to really step back and think about my work in a deeper way. To think about what it really was that I wanted to say and do with my images and work on saying and doing those very things in my photographs rather than just repeating the same empty archetypes. To forge and express my own personal vision rather than the visions set for me by received aesthetics. This realization and the following changes that came about because of it have been some of the biggest breakthroughs that I have had in my time making photos.

So, What of Archetypes, then?

In conclusion I do think there is a place for this archetype approach. It’s just that I personally think the reliance on archetypes should serve a pedagogical function for new photographers as they learn to perfect their technical skills and get a feel for their own personal aesthetic. The archetype gives the new photographer a target to aim at before they have begun to tackle these larger issues for themselves. But they should ultimately be left behind in time as one grows as an artist, the way one eventually stops having to consult recipes when making their favorite meal. To cling to them rather than letting them go as you explore your own personal approach is only to place a limit on your own potential growth. The point from this essay to integrate into your practice is this: Do not repeat archetypes, create your own.