Leica - News

Leica
26th February, 2008.

"This event has caused a lot of problems which will take time to correct and now we want to totally rethink the paths we will take for the future and calm down all this speculation. However, we are optimistic." , said director of business development Stefan Daniel on Tuesday, 26th February, 2008.

The full story will appear in The British Journal of Photography next week, published 5th March, 2008.


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Copyright: Stefan Daniel and Jonathan Eastland.
www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com 2008.
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RICHARD KALVAR - Photographs

An Exhibition
19th September to 3rd November at
The Leica Gallery, 670 Broadway, New York, USA.

"....he saw a man steal from a passerby, stealthily making off with the most precious belongings. He saw a man, armed with a camera, robbing them of what they would never willingly give up. He saw the man take - and what's more, he was standing right next to them - a picture that they would never have wanted to surrender. The man - an Earthling no doubt - loads his 35mm ammunition....The Earthling wants to see without being seen. He walks along in camouflage. He kills in silence, seeming not to have anything to do with it. When he seizes upon a scene from everyday life, some lurking idea immediately transforms it...It is also a way of unmasking horror. The street photographer hunts down the Freudian slips, ridiculous gestures, comical expressions, grotesque poses, sometimes with misgivings, sometimes with severity. He makes as much fun of the people he sees through the lens as of the lens itself: prying, curious, insatiable and demanding....What he likes, in the end, is the pleasure of being free to act without thinking. The photographer cultivates - and therein lies his art - the instant of seeing." - Seloua Luste Boulbina, from the Preface to Richard Kalvar's just published Earthlings.


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Copyright; Seloua Luste Boulbina, Preface to Earthlings by Richard Kalvar; 2007.
www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com 2007
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Leica M8 Handbook and Review

2nd August 2007.

The frequency of calls received regarding the possibility of my writing and publishing the Leica M8 handbook has increased in recent weeks.

Any news of the possibility of this event coming to pass in the foreseeable future will be posted on this site. I have first have to make a thorough evaluation of the camera and this is now in progress with a serial production model. I anticipate several more months of use in real assignment situations before any work could start on a handbook. There is also the small problem of a higher frequency of digital model replacement by Leica gnawing at the decision of whether or not to publish.

In the meantime, for those who may be interested, my Leica M8 review report thus far, will be published in The British Journal of Photography issue of 8th August 2007. The magazine is available on newsstands in major cities but should probably be ordered in advance by those resident in the provinces.

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Copyright; Jonathan Eastland
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"Faceless and nameless" Photographic icons

The most famous of all these nameless icons, perhaps, is the individual who, in 1989, stepped into Tiananmen Square and stopped an advancing line of tanks. His identity never revealed, he's known only as the 'Unknown Rebel' or 'Tank Man'.
Napalm Girl or Running Girl shows a nine-year-old girl running down a road, fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. She's naked, having torn off her clothes, which were on fire.
The 'Falling Man' came to symbolise the unspeakable horrors of 9/11.
While written testimony has the capacity to shock, a single iconic image has the power to pack an emotional punch that lingers on in the mind. Graeme Green examines the impact of some of the most shocking and memorable images of recent times...........
read his full 'Sunday Herald' story of these and other iconic images at.......
http://www.sundayherald.com/arts/arts/display.var.1494219.0.still_lives.php

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Interviews with great Photographers

"Twenty five years is a long time to specialise. It gets you labelled and I find people , young art directors particularly, really don't want to listen to a lot of verbal clap-trap about the meaning of life. They seem to have even less time to look at portfolios. All they know is that you represent a small tooth on a cog in the established machinery and you shoot tanks. That's what you're good at." Robin Adshead in conversation with Jonathan Eastland - read how Robin made the stunning shot of an RAF pilot ejecting from a crippled Harrier jet.
PDF now available for download on the AjaxNetPhoto site at www.ajaxnetphoto.com/robin_adshead_72504.pdf

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World Press Photo 2006; opinion

For the first time in the annals of stills photography, a colour photograph may come to resonate in the ranks of the top twenty most memorable.

Spencer Platt's picture of a car load of Lebanese well-to-dos, drive-by rubbernecking the aftermath of Israeli bombing in Beirut last August, is a brilliantly snatched frame of one of life's many incongruous moments.

For me, this picture skillfuly epitomises the ultimate goal of photographers everywhere who are concerned with documenting the human condition, enshrining, as it does, all the elements we sometimes trust anticipation and chance to bring together in a single frame. Here, through the chaotic scenery, trashed appliances and the rubble of collateral demolition, a gleaming red, open top sports car drifts serenely by, its occupants a bearded driver and four young apparently squeaky clean and smartly dressed girls gawking at the mess surrounding them. One is holding up a cellphone, from which she could be sending a message or a just captured photo of the scenery; another holds a tissue to her visage, as if gagging on the possibly foul air; another strains eagerly to more clearly see the appalling damage.

Wherever one looks in this image, more information keeps coming back to the viewer, bits of detail missed in the first take. The car is a convertible. A background passer-by is also engrossed on a mobile phone. Three of the girls are wearing expensive looking sunglasses. In the chaotic junkyard background, the remains of an air-con unit and other domestic household items lay forlornly rubbished amidst a few surviving palm fronds. Except for the vivid red of the car body panels, colours are mostly subdued, monochromatic in tone and hue, the black and white female attire banging out their distinctive contrast to the red like a loud drum.

No movie footage, videography sequence or desk-top frame grab of it would have produced such a remarkable and riveting image. Newsprint media moguls of the future take note, stills photography is not dead and it still retains the greater power to move the viewer. Perhaps with Platt's picture, we can also rejoice that great photography is back on the map; it's been absent long enough.

Go here to see Spencer Platt's image;
http://www.worldpressphoto.com/index.php?option=com_photogallery&task=view&id=823&Itemid=146&bandwidth=high


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Kodak Film - end of the line...?

Go here for a depressingly good read

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article1343516.ece


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