LFI Magazine 7/2017 E

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L E I C A F O T O G R A F I E I N T E R N AT I O N A L

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René Groebli Antonio Paredes Peter Bauza

Joseph Michael Lopez

Repeat Winner of the TIPA Award

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F / s to p 7 2 | TL 2 : I N THE FIEL D

8 8 | w i nn e r s a nd Finalists

Leica’s fully overhauled, mirrorless APS-C camera with touchscreen operation managed to win over even the the most diehard viewfinder devotee during our practice trial

Terje Abusdal is the winner of the 2017 Leica Oskar Barnack Award. The Newcomer Award went to Sergey Melnitchenko.

We introduce the two winners and ten finalists

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P h oto

Joining an existing home network or creating an ad-hoc network of its own out in the field: it is all in a day’s work for the Leica TL2, which can even act as a miniature web server 82 | shutters All the large sensor manufacturers are developing electronic shutter systems, which will be replacing mechanical shutters – with their advantages and disadvantages – in the near future

1 0 4 | e x h i b i t i o ns Peter Bauza: El Payaso (The Clown) festival hall in El Alto, La Paz

Joseph Michael Lopez 6 | D e a r N e w Yo r k e r

For his long-term project, the New York photographer continues to work on his hometown – as always preferably in black and white

Daniel Etter 28 | t h e c h i l d r e n o f Sy r i a

The TL2 – Leica’s new APS-C system succeeds in our practice test

Children are the first victims in a civil war.

Daniel Etter visited survivors at a Syrian SOSKinderdorf (Children’s Village)

Peter Bauza 3 6 | f ly i n g h i g h

Since 2006, Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales has been transforming his country – to the advantage of the indigenous population. A reportage from La Paz

René Groebli 5 0 | T h e Ey e o f L o v e

Honeymoon threesome: Groebli, his wife Rita and his Leica. A homage on the occasion of the Swiss photographer’s 90th birthday

Walker Evans, San Francisco; Lauren Greenfield, New York; Albert Renger-Patzsch, Paris; Rineke Dijkstra, Gothenburg 1 0 6 | F e s t i va l s The Amsterdam Photography Museum fosters young talent with its Foam Talent format 107 | Leica Galleries An overview of the programme of Leica Galleries around the world, including, among others, Wuales und Lars Beusker 108 | books Current publications by Robin Hammond, Masahisa Fukase, William Daniels, Stephen Shore and Sanne de Wilde 1 1 0 | In t e r v i e w Books, exhibitions, PR: publisher Markus Hartmann speaks about the marketing of art 114 | my picture How Peer Kugler found his way back to photography after a hard time in his personal life 114 | imprint

Antonio Paredes 60 | hanami

Paredes found inspiration for his unconventional, breakthrough fashion series in Hanami, the

By Jess Bonham Anna Lomax Japanese Cherry Blossomand Festival

An exploration on Trust

Cover photo: Joseph Michael Lopez, Leusi andwetransfer.com Leslie on Canal Street, NYC 2015, from the Dear New Yorker series

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LFI G a L l e r y

yo u ’ v e g o t ma i l N e w i n t h e LFI G a l l e r y

Pi c tu re of the week

33/2017

Paris, captured by Lu Wenpeng with the Leica Q

More than 23 000 photographers currently showcase a total of over 300 000 images in the LFI Gallery. The very best uploads are selected by our editorial team and celebrated as Master Shots or Picture of the Week. As of now, an email notification will go out to all photographers whose work has been either distinguished in this way, or accepted into one of the site’s curated categories such as Street Photography, Portrait or Architecture.

The aim is to make it even easier for LFI Gallery members to keep an overview of their work.

And perhaps you might be among those whose images are published in the print-edition of LFI. In the magazine’s Lightbox section, we introduce the most outstanding photographs captured by our readers. In this issue, the space has been dedicated to the winners of the 2017 Leica Oskar Barnack Award – but as of LFI 8/2017, it will again revolve entirely around our readers’ work. lfi-online.de/gallery

Contribut0rs

A reportage that takes your breath away: between La Paz’s southern district and its 4000 metre-high satellite city of El Alto is an altitude difference of 2800 metres, which affects people in the form of considerable physical and mental strain.

“The air gets very thin, and you are short of breath. Even the locals find it a struggle. Many of them yearn to live in one of the lower districts,” German photographer Peter Bauza recounts after his visit to Bolivia’s capital of La Paz. 4 |

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j o s e p h m i c h ae l lo p e z “I struggled in many different ways, but as far as my aesthetics and my photography are concerned, it has been a gradual evolution – a process of growing up and being comfortable with myself, along with continuously challenging myself. It’s about channeling what’s in your heart, putting it in the frame, and finding out where you need to stand and what you need stand for. I think it comes down to whether you really have something to say,” is how Lopez summarises his photographic ethos.

Re n é G r o eb l i

The hotel at 7, Rue Vandamme in Paris is still there today. 65 years ago, it was the setting of a most enchanting declaration of love: for their belated honeymoon, Rita and René Groebli stayed in the city’s Montparnasse district – creating most of the series The Eye of Love in a small room at the Nouvel Hôtel. Renovations and a name-change to Hôtel de la Gaîte may have eradicated the hotel’s 1950s atmosphere, but the timeless beauty of Groebli’s images remains unchanged.

Photos: © Peter Bauza, © Joseph Michael Lopez, © Katrin Matschenz, Hamburg

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dea r Ne w YO R K E R LeicA M

Joseph Michael Lopez

Joseph Michael Lopez left New York when still a child, but was to return years later, transforming the city of his birth into a stage where he also transforms everyday life into something special.

An emotional dialogue with the changing city.

“When we are talking about New York City, we’re dealing with a very special and influential place.”

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“Though New York City has transformed into a very franchised, globalized, amusement park for the super rich‌

‌this town proliferates and manifests the same trade and financial practices that have created the disparity and inequities here and abroad.�

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“How much longer will NYC really be considered relevant as an advocate of a progressive equal culture?�

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“New York City now represents an eccentric bubble of deluded progressive values and an ugly and unsustainable capitalistic behavior.�

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“In a way NYC is like a monster eating itself. This town has become a security deposit box for the wealthy.�

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“Even if I end up leaving New York City I will keep taking, making pictures, I will go deeper—I want to tell stories that matter.”

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j o s e p h M i c h ae l l o p e z

Born in New York in 1973.

Lopez moved to Florida where he became a documentary filmmaker. Though he had never graduated from high school, in 2009 he qualified based on his portfolio, to do his Master’s at Columbia University.

After returning to his hometown, Lopez began to focus on street photography. His New York at Its Core: Future City Lab belongs to the Museum of the City of New York.

jos e phm lo pez .co m LFI -O nl i n e .D E / B log : more questions and Answers colour photos: In collaboration

with the Museum of the City of New York: New York at Its Core: Future City Lab Equipment: Leica MP and Leica M-P240 with Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 Asph and Asph FLE

It’s a hot day in July in New York City. I can see the Brooklyn Bridge through the train window. I’m on my way to Flatbush to speak with Joseph Michael. We’ve known each other for five years. When I reach his apartment, I find myself surrounded by cameras, prints and pictures. Lopez’s love for his work and his hometown are certainly no secret.

LFI: How would you describe yourself ? Are you a street photographer?

Joseph Michael Lopez: I’m a photographer. I feel like more of a documentary artist. I love the street, I love being outside in the company of strangers and I love observing and watching things move. I love the act of just being outside where things are not controlled. There’s a kind of theatricality that I’m drawn to on the street and I think my work fits within the street category; but to me the term ‘street photographer’ can be limiting. I think being uncategorized would be ideal.

I can work on the street but I can also work anywhere.

You were born in New York but you left it early to relocate to south Florida, then you came back. How’s your relationship with the city now?

My parents left Manhattan in the mid-seventies, the mean streets, when the city was close to bankruptcy. My relationship to the city is everything.

It’s definitely changed in the course of almost twenty years being here, but this city is where I was born and where I discovered who I am. I’m 44 now and I am at peace with saying that I’ve arrived and have filled my own shoes. The time I’ve spent on the streets of New York has been a time where I taught myself how to be better, as a human being, how I’ve become more conscious and accountable.

When did you start documenting the streets of New York and what triggered you to do so?

When I returned to New York I was working for Bruce Weber as an analog cinematographer and at some point the fashion story wasn’t really me; I want-

ed to know more, and have deeper meaning in my life. What triggered me to go on the streets was the fact that I didn’t know who I was yet, I was super energized and naive and I wanted to really comprehend life; but I will say that Bruce was such an early inspiration and had such an impact on the pursuit of owning my visual voice.

In the making of an image you play a lot with natural light and highly strong contrasts. Why did you make this choice?

My heavy hand comes from my desire to turn up the volume. I wanted to amplify and convey my emotions, so I gravitated towards a strong modification of contrast that I felt was more in line with my intensity and my feelings.

Your images are predominantly, but not exclusively, black and white. Tell me more about this decision.

I enjoy the surprise of not knowing and waiting for my black and white film to be processed. I love making the blacks black and using natural light in a way that it becomes another subject. The thing about black and white is that you can reduce things to an emotional and metaphysical space, and land on another planet with colour. I want to keep pushing my black and white film practice as long as possible, and keep exploring colour digitally and perhaps continue to build this new merging of both mediums into a cohesive, unexpected language.

You have seen New York change through your lens. Has your style changed with it?

I’ve challenged myself to be more direct. It’s about people allowing you to get intimate with them, and I think you can read that shift in my pictures.

Interview: Francesca Gennari. Born in

Parma, Italy, in 1988, Gennari is Picture Editor at Burn Magazine, as well as a free-lance photographer. She lives in New York.

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LeicA M

Daniel Etter t h e c h i l d r e n o f sy r i a

Children’s eyes haunted by the civil war in Syria: photographer Daniel Etter visited the SOS Kinderdorf facility in the outskirts of Damascus, where traumatised children and war orphans have found a new home. For many of them it is the first chance to live in safety.

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85 percent of all Syrian children are very traumatised. They have lost relatives in the war and have never experienced one day free of worry. Now they have a new home at the SOS Kinderdorf

Sorrowful eyes that stare blankly into nothing, at times a rare delightful burst of laughter, small hands that protectively clasp another child’s hand: the children’s mimicry and gestures offer the viewer a small glimpse of what the youngsters have endured while growing up in the middle of a civil war that has divided the country since 2011.

The children have lost their mothers, fathers or siblings, they were sent out to beg, or maimed by relatives to protect them from abuse by the so-called Islamic State. The only thing they have known till now is war, suffering and loss. At the SOS Kinderdorf, the hope is that they will find a way to process what they have experienced.

The German photographer Daniel Etter took his camera on a visit to the SOS Kinderdorf facility on the outskirts of Damascus. With help from carers, psychologists and SOS mothers, he found a way to connect with the traumatised children – and capture their emotions in his pictures.

Their faces, gestures and expressions speak of their past, but also of the fact that now, at last, they can look to a future that promises them a safe home. Etter’s photos aim to reveal the fragility of these young souls.

Louay Yassin, press relations for SOS Kinderdörfer worldwide, explains the goal of the picture series: “Those of us who were in Syria, could not forget the faces of the traumatised children that we saw at the SOS facility,” he says.

“Etter also hoped to capture the

children’s energy and inner strength that leads them back to a normal life.”

Etter’s photos show another side to war: not the destroyed buildings or wounded victims. The children’s eyes reflect a quiet suffering of the soul.

Some may have physical injuries, but while those injuries gradually heal the ones that have marked their souls remain for much longer.

Direct and abrupt, the series offers a glimpse of the consequences of the unimaginably brutal civil war.

LFI spoke with Daniel Etter about the situation in the children’s village, the significance of pictures in today’s flood of information and a lost generation growing up in Syria. →

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A bed of one’s own, toys, a hand full of colour pencils. Many children have never known what it is to have a safe home. War has taken away their closest family and their homes

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Eyes that speak of suffering: with the help of carers and psychologists, photographer Daniel Etter was able to get close to the children and capture their stories in pictures

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Da n i e l E t t e r Daniel Etter is an author, photographer and film maker. After studying Politics and Journalism, he received a grant from the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace in 2013. His pictures have been honoured by the Alexia Foundation and the Picture of the Year International competition. In 2016, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his pictures of Iraqi refugees. As a print journalist, he has received the Axel Springer Prize among others.

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Photos: SOS-Kinderdörfer worldwide/Daniel Etter

In addition to all the terrible experiences that can be read in the eyes of the children, you can see the happiness that the safety from the confusion of war offers them at SOS Kinderdorf

LFI: How did you imagine the situation in Syria?

Daniel Etter: We all know the images coming out of Syria. What is rarely shown is how normal – at least superficially – the situation in Damascus appears to be. The city is quiet, the bazaars are full of people. At the same time, you hear the sound of fighting every night, and you’re continually being controlled by the police. That was expected. What surprised me was how many internally displaced people live in Damascus. Enormous numbers of people have fled from rural areas to the city. Many of them live in halffinished apartment buildings and barely manage to get by.

How did you find the situation at the SOS Kinderdorf?

The children we met were often war orphans and are of course traumatised.

That is something I expected beforehand, but when you actually get there you understand the stories are more complex. The children are not only victims of war, but also victims of social norms. Some were abandoned by their mothers after their fathers died and their mothers remarried.

There is a lost generation growing up in Syria and it will take a whole generation before their wounds are healed.

Would you have liked to have stayed longer and taken more pictures?

There are so many important, heartbreaking stories in Syria, that it was tough for me to leave after a week.

Exh ibition : 29 September till 18 Octo-

Are images necessary to understand the situation there?

Words can do it better; but when it comes to producing an empathetic experience, to awaken sympathy and interest, then images are irreplaceable. interview: Katrin iwanczuk

ber 2017, LFI, hamburg LFI-On lin e.DE /B log: Interview with Louay yassin, press relations for SOS-Kinderdörfer Equipment: Leica M240 with Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 and 50mm f/1.4 Asph

What thoughts about the situation do you have in mind today?

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F ly i n g

High

LeicA SL

Peter Bauza

Since 2006, Bolivia has been governed and changed by the socialist Evo Morales. He has subjected the Andean state to a complete overhaul, awakening the hope of equality among the indigenous people. We take a look at the country as it fights its way out of poverty.

Above: traffic in La Paz – minis, micros, truffis and taxis are the favourite forms of public transport. A trip in a micro costs between 1.5 and 3 Bolivianos – one Boliviano is worth around twelve euro cents. A truffi is a kind of collective taxi and costs about the same amount. The mini follows the same concept as the collective taxis, but takes up to twelve people. Left: view towards the Hernando Siles sports and football stadium in the Miraflores district of La Paz

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Cholitas luchadores – this is the name given to women wearing a traditional skirt with up to ten petticoats, shawls and hat, who wrestle for the general public (top left). Construction of a ball room by architect Freddy Mamani. Indigenous nouveau-riche often express their cultural pride through these baroque constructions. Supposedly there are already about 150 festival halls of this type in Bolivia – and the number is growing (below). View over the Bolivian capital from El Alto (previous page)

Clockwise from the top right: the Rodriguez traditional fruit and vegetable market in La Paz, about 75 percent of the inhabitants do their shopping at the market; the controls, scales and classification of coca leaves at the Villa Fåtima coca market in La Paz – its legalisation has improved the standard of living for many farmers; the Wiphala social housing district in El Alto aims to give a home to poorer families; view over La Paz and the red line cable car network

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Altitude: 4100 metres – Station: Plaza La Paz. If we are to believe President Evo Morales, two of Bolivia’s greats are coming together this morning in the satellite city of El Alto. One ‘great’ is the new cable car – the fourth line in the largest municipal cable car network in the world and a symbol of the ascendancy of what was once a poor Andean country. The other great is the first passenger on its maiden trip: Juan Evo Morales Ayma, South America’s longest serving President and a symbol for technological advancement, a sustained economic boom, Indigenous Rights, the legalisation of coca plantations, legalised child labour, and a few other things.

As is often the case, Morales arose at five in the morning. He wears jeans, a shirt and the traditional jacket of the Aymara people. Behind him, the snow-covered peaks of the Andes glow orange in the morning light. He greets curious on-lookers with a pat on the shoulder, and says “Hello, my friend,” to reporters unknown to him. Every gesture shows that Evo, as everyone calls him, is one of the people and not part of the elite. He inspects the cable car station, then turns to the gods.

Following indigenous traditions, the President begins the inaugural ceremony by laying a lama foetus on the ground, then coca leaves, and finally alcohol. It is his way of expressing gratitude to Pachamama, the goddess Mother Earth. It is less of a ritual and more of a firm belief that a cable car cannot function without the blessing of the gods. “With the cable car we have come into the world. Our cable car network is the largest in the world and in the highest city in the world.”

Indigenous women toss so much confetti over him that he looks like a sherpa in a snow storm. Then he climbs into the first gondola of the new Teleférico, which is adorned with his name and image, as well as his own logo: Evo Morales Ayma. President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

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The route followed by the new Linea Azul (blue line), has something symbolic about it, as does everything in Bolivia these days. It leads from the El Alto outer district, where the poorest of the poor live, to the city centre where the poor live. Morales is connecting the underclasses to life, the province to the metropolis. It could practically be his government motto.

It is a Sunday like any other Sunday in the modern Bolivia of the last ten years: new cable cars, new streets, new football stadiums, a new name for the country, a new constitution, possibly even soon to become a nuclear state.

In 2006, when 46-year-old Evo Morales of the Aymara people began his term as the country’s first indigenous president, the world laughed at the simple coca farmer dressed in a woolen jumper. During his ten years of governing however, he has impacted his country like no other president and taught the world a lesson in the process: South America’s poorest country is currently the best at fighting poverty. The once virtually bankrupt Andean country now has the largest budget surplus on the continent. Yes, the land of the Pachamama even has its own satellite in space: Túpac Katari 1.

This represents one of the greatest experiments of the 21st century. It is not a question of reforming a country, but of a general overhaul and a new foundation. Morales revokes the rules the world has devised and tries to turn back five hundred years of European domination. He contradicts much of what we thought we knew about nation building. But can it work well? And for how long?

Altitude: 4100 metres – Station: Jach’A Qhathu. El Alto was always the poorest city in the poorest country in South America. Seen from high in the gondola, it is a soulless collection of redbrick huts spreading endlessly over the high plateau. More recently however, multi-storey palaces in the gaudy colours of Bolivian traditional garb are rising up above that red sea. They belong to the new indigenous middle class and are called Cholets; a mix-

ture of the word chalet and cholo, the derogatory expression referring to the indigenous. These were built by architect Freddy Mamani, the bestknown man in Bolivia after Morales.

With quick steps, Mamani crosses the building site of a new cholet as large as a gymnasium with a colour scheme like a gingerbread house.

Shops are on the ground floor, an enormous festival hall on the first floor and a penthouse for the owner, one of the many indigenous entrepreneurs who received cheap credit from Morales, at the top. “I include indigenous elements everywhere,” Mamami explains. “The Cross of the Andes on the ceiling. The columns are painted with the colours of our textiles. The mirrors symbolise the diamonds in our land.” Some people call it spaceship architecture; he calls it indigenous identity.

Mamami, aged 45, can hardly keep up with the flood of commissions received from the indigenous nouveauriche. He has brought all five siblings into the company. The family once lived in abject poverty in the countryside: his father was a builder, mother a housewife, until Freddy – inspired by the election of Morales – realised his dream of indigenous construction.

“Up until that point there was only Spanish, colonial architecture and the clay huts of the poor. At university, professors told me that my style was kitsch. Nowadays I send them invitations to my exhibitions in Washington or the Venice Biennale.”

Mamani climbs into his jeep and begins a ‘journey through our new indigenous land’. He drives alongside the new cable car line through thick, chaotic traffic. With a deadline of 2019, this is where the blue, purple and silver lines are due to bring order to the uncontrolled urban growth. On the radio, the news is read in the language of the Aymara and in Quechua. At a night school on the corner, indigenous elders take intense courses →

Justa Elena Canaviri Choque appears live on state television with the La Justa show, a cooking programme with advertising. She is dressed in traditional indigenous clothing

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Traditions passed on down: Dona Marta learnt scrying and healing from her parents.

She practices her profession close to the cable car station in El Alto

Pe t e r bau z a Bauza was an export merchant who travelled throughout Europe, Africa and South America.

Born in Dßsseldorf, he has been living in Latin America for twenty years, turning his hobby, photography, into his profession. He is the winner of numerous prizes, including the ArthusBertrand Visa d’or 2016 and the World Press Award 2017. His book, Copacabana Palace, was published in 2016. This work can also be seen in issue No. 5 of the M Magazine.

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in reading and writing: since 2005 the rate of illiteracy in Bolivia has dropped from thirteen percent to three. In an office next door, young activists are coordinating a popular petition with the aim of getting Facebook to set up in Aymara, the language of more than ten million people. No indigenous people in South America have come so decisively close to power as have the Aymara in Bolivia.

Altitude: 3700 metres – Station: Villarroel. Three stations further east there is a mouldy smell in the air. It penetrates through the tiniest crack in houses and cars, it wafts around squares and a work site where the new white cable car line is currently being built. The smell rises from an indoor market on the side of the hill: the closer one gets, the stronger it becomes until you are under the impression that you are in Yungas, the coca-growing region. In the halls of Villa Fátima market, people scurry through the labyrinth-like passageways bent over by the heavy sacks they carry, which are larger than themselves.

Clients study the quality of the green leaves through magnifying glasses.

They load the sacks onto the roofs of cars, trucks and buses, and send it off around the country.

In the middle of all the chaos a brawny, little man, stuffs green coca leaves into the cheeks of his mouth and sucks on the juice. “Too sweet for cocaine,” he judges. “Our leaves from Yungas are only good for chewing. Shift workers stay alert for longer. Students concentrate better. The bitter leaves from the Chapare region, where brother Evo was the boss, are better for cocaine.” Javier Aparicio, 46, is a labour union boss like Evo Morales once was – and leader of around 35 000 farmers.

“This is the largest coca market in the world,” he says with pride. “And it’s all legal.” Thanks to Evo’s new ‘coca yes, cocaine no’ policy, each farmer can grow the holy plant in an area of

1600 square metres, and sell it at Villa Fátima. They earn around $1000 a month, three times the minimum salary. “I can feed my whole extended family with it, and for the first time send a son to university,” Aparicio says proudly. “But we want more. We’re working on Law 1008. We don’t want any limitations any more, 97 percent of the harvest is used in a harmless manner, only three percent is for cocaine. Coca is our national heritage.

One wouldn’t think of forbidding sushi to the Japanese either.”

The coca trade has not exploded since Morales legalised it. According to UN calculations for 2015, the whole area of cultivation is 20 200 hectares, less than in 2003. The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) continues to demand stronger controls, but Morales remains unimpressed by this demand. He threw the DEA out of the country in 2008. Against international protests, he has nationalised cement factories and energy companies, accusing the World Monetary Fund of dictatorship. Today the IWF calls Bolivia’s departure huge.

Morales may be a socialist, but he is also pragmatic. Nationalisation yes, but of just over 20 key enterprises, not 1200 companies as in Venezuela.

And, like in the oil and gas sector, foreign companies are also allowed to keep a 49 percent interest in lithium, zinc and gold mining operations. In this manner, Morales is trying to follow something like a third option, which is closer to the Scandinavian model than the failed Latino-socialism of Venezuela and Argentina. The social conditions in Bolivia have improved so much that aid organisations are withdrawing from the country. Even so, over a million of Bolivia’s 10.7 million inhabitants live on one euro a day. In recent years, economic growth has been over five percent, but this has slowed slightly since 2015.

Altitude: 3500 metres – Station: Cancha Zapata. A couple of stations further along, in the centre of La Paz, Justa Canaviri prepares for her TV show.

She straightens out her five layers

of skirts and puts her black felt hat in place. Behind her a neon sign reads ‘New Fatherland Network. The voice of the plurinational state’. Morales’s political movement has penetrated every level of life: politics and the economy, media and justice, and the entertainment business. Evo is as present in the cityscape as Mao once was in China or Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

If Morales is the voice of the country, then La Justa is the voice of the people. Known to everyone, she is the first indigenous woman to moderate a daily programme on state television.

“Hallo, my Papitas and Mamitas,” she says, greeting the millions of viewers before going on to discuss cooking recipes and the rights of gay people, energy saving and contraception, and about her depression.

Her path was arduous; tears pour down her face and her voice gets quieter. Ten years ago there were virtually no women on television, and certainly not cholas. At the time Canaviri sold at the market, and she did it with such panache that she was invited to appear on television. Her performance was so convincing that she was offered a cooking show. This was such a success that she was given a show where she could talk about everything. But she does not like to talk about racism in front of the camera. Until Evo came onto the scene, the colour of the skin and the surname kept indigenous people out of the most important jobs.

After the programme, she takes the cable car to the Zona Sur where she lives. She may be the best-known woman in Bolivia, but the most frequent question she gets asked is: what family do you do the housework for? jan Christoph Wiechmann , Born in Hamburg in 1967, he is a Latin American correspondent for Stern, Geo and Capital in Rio.

peterbauza.com LFI-On lin e.DE /B log: Behind the Scenes Equipment: Leica SL with Vario-Elmarit-SL 24–90mm f/2.8-4 Asph

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L e i c A C l a ss i c

René Groebli T h e E y e o f L ov e

Conceived as a declaration of love to his wife Rita, René Groebli’s photo essay epitomises the art of capturing the moment in tender and timeless images – a series that remains trailblazing to this day. The acclaimed Swiss photographer celebrates his 90th birthday.

The peaceful setting of a small hotel room allowed for an intimate dialogue, which culminated in a unique photographic series

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René and Rita Groebli spent two weeks in Paris at the small Nouvel Hôtel in the bohemian district of Mont­ parnasse. Groebli shot around 300 photographs – mostly with a Leica, some with a Rolleiflex. Rita is more than a muse and a model: the selection for the book published in 1954 was made by both of them

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Poetic moments, borne out of subtle sensuality and intimate familiarity: time and again, the photographer found new ways to tell the story of their love, capturing images in the changing light of night and day

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Despite their inherent romance and playful narrative, the images are equally defined by the strength and precision of their compositions – whereby Groebli continuously tried out different variations

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R E N é G r o eb l i

Born in Zurich on 9 October 1927. In 1944, Groebli began a photography apprenticeship followed by studies at the Zurich School of Applied Arts and a two-year training as a documentary cinematographer, starting in 1946.

From 1949 onwards, photojournalist for Swiss and international magazines. In the same year his first independent series, Magie der Schiene (Rail Magic) was published.

The early fifties saw him abandon photojournalism for industry and advertising photography supported by his wife Rita (1923–2013).

Groebli’s experiments in artistic, but also applied, colour photography gained international acclaim. In the late seventies, Groebli retreated from commercial photography.

r e negro ebl i .co m Bo o ks : (selection) New York 1978 (2017); Magie der Schiene (2017); Nudes (2016); Early Work (2015); Das Auge der Liebe (2014): all German and English except Das Auge der Liebe; all published by Sturm & Drang Publishing, Zurich

If the experience of being in love can be captured in visual form, then this series manages to do just that: sensuality, intimacy, familiarity and transience are brought together in light, spontaneous images. In summer 1952, the young Swiss couple enjoyed a belated honeymoon in Paris, staying in a small hotel at 7, Rue Vandamme.

It was here that most of the images in this series were taken. The newlyweds had met at the Zurich School of Applied Arts, where the 17-year-old Groebli had signed up for Hans Finsler’s photography class, while Rita Dürmüller, four years his senior, was a much-admired student in the Master Class for Applied and Fine Arts. Groebli broke off his photography studies and decided to train as a cinematographer, but he and Rita stayed in touch.

In 1949, feeling limited by the creative scope of the cinema camera, Groebli began to work as a photojournalist.

He started out at the Züricher Woche before working for London’s Black Star agency, predominantly in Africa and the Middle East. These commissions were the reason the couple had to postpone their honeymoon by a year. It was therefore not least for Rita’s sake that Groebli eventually decided to give up the frantic lifestyle of a reporter in favour of a more settled career in the commercial sector. As of the midfifties, the assignments enabled the couple to have their own home with a large studio, and the desired freedom all of this entailed.

By then, Das Auge der Liebe (The Eye of Love) had already been published. Originally intended as a private album, the book caused quite a stir.

Yet its success was mostly limited to the United States, while Swiss audiences – whose visual sensibilities had been shaped by a documentary style – found both the artistic approach and the risqué nature of the images very unconventional.

Published in 1954, the booklet is the epitome of a visual love letter, composed of just 25 images. Although they were taken during the couple’s entire trip to Paris, Marseilles and Toulon, the images form an intimate

essay that could be telling the story of one day. Groebli remembers that it was his wife who initially prompted him to take some pictures. Soon, the process turned into a private dialogue between two lovers. Far from being a typical honeymoon album, Das Auge der Liebe is a condensed vision of an exceptional emotional experience.

The Parisian hotel room is part of the narrative in the form of interiors and delicate still lifes, captured in a soft, flattering light. The lace curtains, aptly decorated with the image of Cupid, are as integral to the story as small, evocative arrangements such as a negligee draped from a hanger. But the photographer’s true focus is always on the beloved and desired woman: her silhouette, captured in an interplay of sharpness and blur; sequences of dressing and undressing; and, time and again, her bare body. The photographer looks at his wife and celebrates her physicality, comfortable in his role as a trusted voyeur with a sensitive understanding of closeness and eroticism. The poetry of this series was far ahead of its time, which is part of its enduring appeal. Much of the visual language involves mere allusions, leaving it up to the viewer to imagine what might happen next. Indeed it was precisely this complicity between the protagonists and the observer that seemed so scandalous.

Rita naturally played a vital role – not only as a model with a sensitive understanding of the moment, but also through her involvement in the publication process. “Rita taught me how to design a book,” the photographer maintains to this day. Rita was graciously aware of the enthusiasm her husband’s homage to their love elicited in later generations, though she rarely offered to comment on the subject. Their partnership endured for over sixty years.

Rita’s passing four years ago makes this series an all the more poignant tribute to two people’s extraordinary journey. Ulrich Rüter

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LeicA S

Antonio Paredes Ha n am i

Floating like a cherry blossom on a gentle wind, model Anabel takes on the appearance of a western geisha for Paredes’s pictures.

A visual dance between graceful blossom and elegiac beauty.

Model Anabel as a gentle, western-style geisha.

Soft beauty lends a dreamlike touch to her provocative, defiant habitus

Gauzy clouds of colours float in places over the surfaces of the images; softness and blurriness go beyond the limits of today’s fashion photography

Emerging from post-impressionistic, classic floral stilllifes, touching beauty meets painful transience

Making use of modern, floral accents, stylist Jeanne Dekonink has given that something special to the whole series

This story began with Antonio Paredes buying flowers from two of his favourite florists, Moulié, on Place du Palais Bourbon, and L’Artisan Fleuriste, on Rue Vieill-du-Temple, both in Paris where he now lives. “Flowers were the origin of the project,” he explains.

“I wanted to work with colours, something happy and sexy. I started photographing the flowers a few days before the shoot with Anabel. I wanted the flowers to inspire the fashion.”

After photographing the flowers Paredes’s research led him to the traditional Japanese custom of hanami, which means, literally, ‘flower viewing’. Hanami is the Japanese cherry blossom (and sometimes plum blossom) festival that welcomes in the spring every year when the country’s cherry trees begin to bloom, starting in the south around the end of March and then sweeping northwards into April and May. If you are ever lucky enough to visit Japan in the springtime, there are festivals in the parks and the televised weather reports are accompanied by hanami reports, showing the progress of this wave of blossoming white and pink petals as it washes across the country.

Thinking about the Hanami festival brought Paredes around to the idea of the geisha. “I wanted to start from a geisha vision, without going into the classic geisha history that has been done so many times,” he says. “So I decided to make a radical break by choosing a western model.” This was how they came to cast Anabel. “Jeanne Dekonink, the stylist, was inspired by the idea, and together we created the story,” he continues. On the day of the shoot, Dekonink introduced some floral motifs through her choice of prints and make-up, and mixed them together with moments of abstraction and rich, luxurious colours.

Antonio Paredes comes from Mexico City. He is a Latin American in Paris, and for this story the French

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influence was as important as the Japanese. In particular he looked to the work of French photographer Sarah Moon, who first came to prominence in London in the 1970s for her intentionally out-of-focus pictures of models and wilting flowers in sickly colours. “I wanted the series to be seen exactly as a dream,” he reveals.

“I wanted to get close to that special ambiance Sarah Moon has in her photographs, so I played with light flare and fabrics over the lenses.” Paredes has always liked to create interesting effects and prefers that these things happen during the shoot, rather than in post-production, as for him this is a more authentic way of working. The soft focus and blurriness of Hanami, and the clouds of colours that float in places over the surfaces of the images, means that looking at these pages really is like stepping into a dream; or a painting, or a painting of a dream.

When I first see the prints I am also staying in Paris. Most nights I walk past the flower shop on Vieilledu-Temple. I mention to Antonio that his images remind me of the Dutch paintings of flowers in the Louvre, but he says he was more inspired by Félix Vallotton’s paintings of flowers made in Paris in the early 20th century.

Vallotton, I learn, was involved with the Nabis group of artists that mixed aspects of impressionism with decorative arts, abandoning realism in favour of emotional effects, patterns and unreal palettes.

“I wanted to push colours and break the standard restrictions in fashion photography today, where everything has to be sharp and clear,” he explains. Instead of lifeless clarity he has turned his story into a dream, and such dreaminess only makes sense from a man who has moved halfway across the world to do what he has always wanted. “Because of the pressure my father put on me to take over our family business, I knew that becoming a photographer in Mexico would never be supported. I came to France with the desire to fulfill my childhood dream and follow my own path.” dean kissick

A n to n i o Pa r ede s The photographer is particularly drawn to emotions, visions, special visual effects.

Paredes dreamt of becoming a photographer from an early age – which is why he left his homeland of Mexico. He assisted well-known fashion photographers such as Craig McDean and Vincent Peters, and also worked for Paolo Roversi and Ryan McGinley.

Paredes has been living in Paris for eight years.

an ton ioparede s stu dio.com s -magazin e.ph otograph y: Interview/ Digital Feature about Hanami

Equipment: Leica S007 with Summarit-S 70mm f/2.5 Asph, Summicron-S 100mm f/2, Apo-Macro-Summarit-S 120mm f/2.5

f/ s top – TL 2 f i e l d t e s t – TL 2 C o n n e c t i v i t y – s h u t t e r s –

Ha n d s - o n : t h e n e w TL 2 p r ov ed a s i m p r e s s i v e i n p rac t i c e a s i t s t e c h n i c a l s p e c i f i c at i o n s h ad l ed u s to e x p e c t

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To u c h É !

L e i c a TL 2

The launch of Leica’s new APS-C ­camera did not get off to a great start – but in our practice test, the TL2 proved to be the successful maturation of a concept, which would have deserved a far more auspicious introduction.

Only the most essential operating elements are positioned on the TL2’s exterior body – all other parameters are controlled via the touchscreen menu

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When we put in our request for a test model of the new TL2, we also asked for the inclusion of a Visoflex. Yet when the package arrived shortly before the launch, it happened to be delivered without the electronic viewfinder. Maybe it was this coincidence that kept us from encountering the technological blunder that later transpired. On the other hand, the issue in question had already bypassed all of the field testers who had dedicated the past few months to investigating the TL2. In any case, nobody was able to raise the alarm in time. And so it came that, as soon as the Leica TL2 was released on the market – equipped with virtually every characteristic that defines a contemporary APS-C camera (see LFI 6/ 2017, pg. 80) and fully overhauled in terms of all of its system-specific features – Leica had to issue an immediate recall.

The reason: using the Visoflex electronic viewfinder, an indispensable accessory for anyone unwilling to photograph with an outstretched arm, could potentially cause a failure within the camera that renders it completely unusable.

According to reports, this occurred if three parameters coincided, though they were never specified. Clearly, this was a phenomenon so unlikely and so rare that it went unnoticed throughout the entire trial period, until it affected a few unfortunate early customers.

This might raise questions about the applied testing procedures, or equally about the devastating complexity of an operating

software that is capable of producing such errors more or less arbitrarily. In any case, Leica’s reaction was spot-on – which is to say, instantaneous. They immediately terminated sales, identified the problem, and eliminated it by means of a firmware update.

But even so, the camera’s first impression has been tainted – which is a great shame considering that, once you have embraced its overall concept, the TL2 has so much going for it: start-up and wake-up times are noticeably shorter; swiping and tapping the menu options are fluid and instantaneous; the contrast-detection autofocus is responsive and precise.

The camera has fantastic ergonomics, nestling comfortably in your right hand while you adjust a parameter with your left. The same applies when work ing in the focus-and-release mode, which lets you determine the focus point on the display and release the shutter at the same time.

This works brilliantly even with the Summilux-TL 35 mm f/1.4 Asph at open aperture, right in the thick of a busy scene. The result is exactly the kind of dynamic shooting you would want from a camera – and even the most dedicated viewfinder devotees cannot help but be impressed by the benefits a touchscreen has to offer.

As we know, the 3.7-inch display represents the TL2’s operational core element, which made it possible for the camera’s exterior design to be as elegant and purist as it is. This not only →

Photos: Olaf Stefanus

Top: With the focus-and-release method, which lets you focus and expose the image at the same time, you can take full advantage of the TL2’s super-responsive AF (here with the Summilux-TL 35mm f/1.4 wide open).

We had ­accidentally turned the ISO to 800 – so the electronic shutter automatically kicked in and exposed the image at 1/10 000s. Below: The Vario-Elmar 11–23mm is also an excellent tool – with electronic lens correction to ­support its optical design, and free of aberrations (image: 11mm, f/3.5, ISO 400)

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Photos: Olaf Stefanus

The high resolution of the TL2’s new 24-MP sensor can be attributed to the market pressures that have compelled sensor ­ anufacturers to propagate pixel density as the be-all and end-all, even in sensor formats such as APS-C – regardm less of whether or not it actually increases the amount of image information. In any case, the sensor design brings with it an improved high-ISO performance: the image shot at ISO 6400 (centre) is absolutely fine; ISO 25 000 (below) already starts to look fairly pixellated when viewed at 100%. Top: ISO 100

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sets the TL2 apart from the majority of its competitors (whose rear panels tend to be overloaded with control elements, though without making the menu any less complicated), but also goes against the current trend of reintroducing the classic settings dial as the most established and intuitive form of adjusting the main shooting parameters. Prominent examples include Fuji’s X systems and, of course, the Leica Q. This may raise the question, have Leica sacrificed functionality in favour of external aesthetics? To the contrary: the icon-based menu is structured in a logical and consistent manner, and you are also able to

select your most frequentlyused functions and group them into a personal menu.

The right-hand settings dial embedded into the top plate adapts its function depending on the selected exposure mode – in aperture priority mode, it serves to control the aperture. The left-hand dial has a fixed function only during manual exposure, in order to ensure that both shutter speed and aperture can be set simultaneously. At all other times, it can be configured according to personal preference – our choice was the ISO. So while the TL2 offers the same essential functions as other, far less aesthetically pleasing cameras, it does so within the arguably greater convenience and

better overview of a touchscreen menu.

The ease of operating the settings dial, which in our case was mapped to control the ISO, also has its pitfalls.

If you have been holding the camera in a primed-toshoot position for a longer period, you might suddenly find that the sensitivity has been accidentally turned up without you noticing. It may not leap all the way up to the maximum setting of 50 000, but on a bright day with a fully open 35mm f/1.4, even ISO 800 would normally have produced images that were completely unusable.

Fortunately, however, the TL’s fully-electronic shutter (capable of exposure times of up to 1/40 000s) automatically steps into the breach

as soon as the shutter speed exceeds 1/4000s. This is not only a welcome safety net for times when the photographer simply forgot to pay attention, but also allows for compositions with selective focus in virtually any lighting conditions – a fantastic creative option, to which the 35mm f/1.4, for example, is very well suited.

Incidentally, we eventually found out by trial and error (as we are not always keen on reading manuals) that you can conveniently lock and unlock the setting on the dial with a prolonged tap on the corresponding menu icon.

Also worth mentioning is the omission of the integrated pop-up flash →

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The TL2 and its portfolio of lenses: the 60mm Macro-Elmarit, the Vario-Elmar 11–23mm, the VarioElmar 55–135mm, the Vario-Elmar 18–56mm, the 35mm Summilux and the 23mm Summicron

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previously featured on the TL. Though this is regrettable for anyone who occasionally liked to use it to brighten up a foreground, it is of no great consequence.

Furthermore, what used to be a dedicated video button on the top plate can now

additionally be configured with the playback function, or can be used to switch between camera display and Visoflex. The 32-GB internal memory first introduced in the TL continues to be a great help to anyone prone to forgetting their memory card. The USB-3 interface makes the subsequent transfer of the images quick and easy.

We would very much have liked to try out the ApoVario-Elmar-TL 55–135mm f/3.5–4.5 Asph, in order to see whether the lack of an image stabiliser becomes a noticeable ­problem at the telephoto end. After all, this represents a definite shortcoming of the TL system compared to its competitors.

Only those working with

SL lenses are able to enjoy the benefits of anti-shake technology. You do wonder how realistic it is to think that TL2-owners will opt for SL lenses, and that SLphotographers will feel enticed by the smaller sensor of the TL, merely for the sake of a smaller and lighter camera body. Nevertheless, it is a viable option – as is the possibility of using adaptors to attach M and R lenses, which now benefit from the advantage of Focus Peaking.

The TL system is officially geared towards customers whose experience with photography evolved on a smartphone, and who are now looking for a seamless transition into the world

of high-quality photography without having to make an excessive initial investment.

In the light of this particular market position, letting the TL2 occupy a place amongst Leica’s most ambitious ­camera systems may well seem a little outlandish. Yet we have concluded that the TL2 is a strategic statement that confirms Leica’s commitment to the TL concept. The TL system’s native lens portfolio already encompasses excellent optical designs which naturally benefit from various electronic optical corrections. There is the fantastic, if rather bulky Summilux we mentioned earlier, along with a petite 23mm Summicron, a 60mm f2.8 ApoMacro-Elmarit, and three

Vario lenses with zoom ranges of 11–23mm, 18–56mm and 55–135mm. This assortment of options should satisfy the target clientèle’s every need. We will take a closer look at these lenses in due course, especially now that the camera has grown out of its infancy stages, and clearly deserves a far more positive response.

One question that remains is whether the TL2’s interface really provides what smartphone users are likely to expect. With the camera’s tap and swipe operation, Leica have certainly developed a system that offers an appealing coherence, rationality and simplicity.

Nevertheless, it seems to fall short of the full potential

of the touchscreen concept. To name one example: the ACDSee Camera Pro smartphone app illustrates just how many processing options can be laid out as buttons and sliders on a touchscreen surface, without making it look in any way overloaded or confusing. Admittedly, most of them are superfluous if you are using a DNG workflow (at long last, the TL2 is able to save DNGs on their own rather than in combination with JPEG), but it is the principle that counts: there is so much a camera whose concept is built around the touchscreen could potentially facilitate. There is one app function in particular that would have been a fantastic addition to the

TL2’s touch-focus selection: a separate exposure point to indicate the part of the image you wish to meter.

This would have been an extremely useful and very intuitive alternative to the TL2’s conventional exposure compensation system.

But such minor gripes are intended less as a criticism and more as constructive suggestions. In essence, the TL2 has turned the TL concept into a mature camera system, whose excellent image ­quality is now matched by the equally impressive speed of its core functions. The Visoflexmishap, which was unfortunate yet swiftly remedied, should not be allowed to overshadow this fact. olaf stefanus

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w e l l c o n n e c t ed The Leica tl2 app

The days of the remote shutter release seem well and truly over, with smartphone apps increasingly taking its place.

We have taken a closer look at the app that accompanies the new Leica TL2.

smartphone technology to enable mobile communication and remote shooting.

This is facilitated by an app, which connects the Android or iOS device to the TL2 – enabling not only the remote-controlled operation of the camera, but also a fast wireless transfer of images onto your smartphone, where they can be edited or posted on social media. As iPhone and iPod users, we worked with the iOS-version of the app, which has already proved itself with the T and TL. WLA N Co nne c t i o n .

Nobody could blame camera manufacturers for feeling less than enthusiastic about the rise of the smartphone.

After all, mobile phones with their modest cameras have almost eradicated the digital compact camera market. Rather than carrying around a separate camera, it is increasingly common to opt for the convenience of a smartphone. The typical drawbacks of smartphone photography, such as fixed wide-angle lenses, limited settings options and lower image quality, are offset by the a­ bility to instantly send, upload and share

images online. By contrast, the thought of a post-processing session on the main computer (always a likely prospect if you work with a dedicated camera) can seem a little daunting to some people. While this probably does not apply to owners of an ambitious camera such as the TL2, they might still envy smartphone photographers for one particular thing: instantaneous access to mobile communication.

With its well-executed touchscreen operation, the TL2 actually bears a close resemblance to a smartphone – and it also utilises

The TL2 offers two WLAN modes: it can either join an existing network on the 2.4GHz band, or set up its own, autonomous ad-hoc network. The latter enables you to couple your camera and phone at any location while out in the field, while the former probably only makes sense if you are at home and feel like using the app in place of a remote shutter.

When joining an existing WLAN, you simply enter the password using the camera’s touchscreen keyboard.

You will then be asked whether you want to establish the connection in

order to view the web gallery (more on this later), or to connect to the app – in which case the smartphone must also go online, using the details displayed on the TL2’s touchscreen.

The network is selected on the smartphone, whereby the password only has to be entered the first time you join the network.

R e m ot e Co n t rol. The app starts out in remote control mode – the camera’s display blacks out, and the Live View image is instead wirelessly transmitted onto the smartphone screen.

When holding the phone in a vertical position, the Live image is rather small in size, but complemented by a wealth of information such as battery level, exposure mode, shutter speed, aperture and sensitivity. Tilted into landscape format, the phone displays a drastically pared-down interface ­showing only the shutter release and video button.

A tap on the smartphone screen lets you set the focus point for the AF, just like on the TL2’s touchscreen.

The exposure mode is always adopted from the camera, and cannot be →

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Setting up a WLAN connection between the TL2 and your iPhone soon becomes second nature. In portrait format, you can control parameters such as aperture and sensitivity, while landscape format gives you a larger Live image

The Leica app only lets you transfer images in JPEG format from the camera to your mobile. To benefit from the additional data and quality potential of DNGs, they have to be read straight from the SD card; the subsequent Raw conversion is well within the computing abilities of modern mobile devices. With Apple products, the card reader has to be purchased separately, but it does give you the advantage that even DNG files can be imported directly into the photo library (left top). For Raw conversion, you need user-friendly specialist apps such as Adobe Lightroom (left below), which allow you to synchronise the results to your main Mac or PC

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changed within the app. If you are working in program mode, you must not adjust any settings apart from ISO and exposure compensation – otherwise you end up overriding the automatic aperture and shutter speed settings. In manual mode, the app displays the exposure value only as a number, whereas a classic ­exposure meter would probably have been more intuitive. You may also wonder why the app does not let you scroll through the camera’s menus and settings, until you realise that using the TL2’s touchscreen for this purpose is just as convenient.

The transmitted Live image tends to be a little jerky, and there is a slight lag when you release the shutter via the app. But this hardly warrants too much criticism, considering that the app’s primary function is to replace the cable release, without the need to carry any additional equipment.

This offers an unprecedented level of convenience, and the slight time-lag is easy to accommodate.

Playback and Trans f er. Of course the app also

allows you to view images that have been saved onto the camera. At first glance, this function makes little sense, given that the TL2’s generous display lends itself far better to browsing your gallery than any smartphone. Its real purpose, however, is to let you transfer files from the camera onto your phone in order to forward them as required.

They can either be directly passed on to other apps such as Email or Instagram, or placed in the central photo

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library (iOS users will find this in the album titled ‘Leica’), from where you can manage, edit and transfer images to other applications. Once a picture has been uploaded to the photo library, it can be synchronised across other devices using your respective provider’s Cloud service.

Transferring images via the app is extremely fast – a picture can easily be shared online just a few minutes after it was taken. Doing the same thing with a photo shot directly on your smartphone would be only marginally faster – whereas the TL2 gives you the added advantages of far greater image quality, access to a whole host of focal lengths, and a much wider range of compositional possibilities.

Inevitably, there are some limitations. For one, you can only export JPEG files. If you record exclusively to DNG, the app will fail to see the images and will not even offer a transfer.

If the TL2 is set to both DNG and JPEG, the app will only show and transfer the JPEG file. This would be a problem if transferring images via the app was the only way to export files from the camera. But if you intend to send or upload pictures right after they were taken, you are probably not keen to invest time in a Raw conversion – so in real terms, being limited to JPEGs is no signi­ficant disadvantage.

The second issue is image size. Exporting pictures from the camera one at a time is the only way to retain the maximum resolution of 6000 × 4000 pixels – in which case the WLAN transfer can take a little

while. If you select several pictures and export them in one go, their resolution will be reduced down to just 1632 × 1080 pixels. That is less than even a smartphone camera would deliver, though still more than you will normally need to view or post something online.

W e b Ga l l e ry. As an alter-

native to coupling the TL2 to your phone, you can use the web gallery, which is accessible from any device connected to the same network as the camera. For this purpose, the TL2 features a mini web-server, which can be reached by entering the displayed IP address into the browser. With its simple design, the gallery can be very useful if all you want to do is review your images in a slightly larger size. However, like the app it is limited to showing JPEGs with a pared-down resolution.

Ca r d R ea d e r . The app serves as an excellent remote control for the camera, but when it comes to transferring images to your smartphone or tablet, there are certain qualitative restrictions. To some extent this is caused by the TL2’s rather modest, 802.11g network capacity, which cannot support high-speed transfers of large image files. On the other hand, the advanced computing power of modern smartphones and tablets makes them perfectly capable of carrying out Raw conversions.

Therefore, all you need is a way to get your DNGs onto these devices. Many android devices come with an integrated card reader, while Apple offer a separate

SD card reader for iPhones and iPads, allowing a fairly speedy transfer of images from the memory card to the photo library – and this explicitly includes Raw files.

Once they have been added to the photo library, they can be converted with the aid of apps made specifically for this task. Fortunately, Adobe are very active in this field, offering Lightroom as an app for both iOS and Android. The app is even free of charge, although taking out a CC subscription gives you access to a wider range of options. The mobile versions of Lightroom and Photoshop offer almost as many functions as you are used to from your Mac or PC. Most vitally, however, they allow you to start editing your images on your mobile device wherever you might be, and finalise processing on your main computer at a later time.

Su cc e ssf u l Co nne ct i o n . To anyone who has

experienced highly-priced remote shutter releases or even the trusty old cable release, replacing them with a smartphone that shows a Live image and allows you to control focus and exposure feels almost like something out of a James Bond film.

The ability to export and subsequently forward image files is of course also an asset.

And even though you still have to read DNGs straight from the memory card in order to benefit from their quality reserves, there are apps specifically designed for this purpose. Maybe postprocessing sessions on the main computer really will soon be a thing of the past. holger sparr

s h u t t e r e vo lu t i o n m e c h a n i c a l , h y b r i d, e l e c t r o n i c

In the history of photography, various methods of starting and stopping exposure have been devised and most of these are used in some Leica camera. In the future, mechanical shutters may make way for a fast and silent, fully electronic shutter.

Together with the aperture, the shutter determines the amount of light reaching the sensor. But just like the aperture, the shutter serves an additional role besides controlling the exposure.

The f-stop also defines the depth of field and the shutter can freeze the motion of both the subject and the camera. This second task is actually much more difficult to achieve than the first and the different types of shutter vary in their ability to freeze the motion without introducing artefacts.

Fo cal-plane shutter.

The focal-plane shutter is arguably the most common type of shutter; it is found in both SLRs and rangefinders. As its name implies, the shutter mechanism is located in – or rather close to – the focal plane. Two shutter ‘curtains’ travel in 82 |

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front of the sensor, opening and closing the light path.

Originally a rubberised and thus opaque fabric was used for the curtains, but stateof-the-art designs have switched to metal blades since these can better withstand the forces tearing at fast moving curtains.

The speed of the shutter curtains is an important parameter characterising a shutter but it has no direct bearing on the exposure time. Before the exposure the sensor is hidden behind the first curtain. In this state all of its pixels are reset so the sensor is like a clean slate. Then the curtain starts to move, gradually revealing more and more of the sensor. Once the chosen exposure time has passed, the second curtain, previously hidden in the wings, follows the first one, closing the path to the sensor

once again. Between the two curtains there is an opening, a slit exposing part of the sensor, and with the curtains this slit is travelling across the sensor – hence the German name for the focal-plane shutter, ‘Schlitzverschluss’ (slit shutter).

Because the sensor gets exposed through a window between two moving curtains, different parts of the sensor get exposed at slightly different times. Still the duration of the exposure is the same for every pixel as the delay between the opening curtain and the closing curtain equals the selected exposure time. Moving subjects could get distorted as a top part of the subject is captured a little bit later than a bottom part, but with today’s shutter mechanisms sporting fast moving curtains this has mostly ceased to be a concern.

The curtains of a focalplane shutter travel at a fixed speed, regardless of the exposure time – the speed of the shutter curtains has nothing to do with the shutter speed. In a state-of-theart shutter mechanisms for 35mm cameras, the curtains take from about 1/180 to 1/500 s to travel the full 24 mm of the image height.

Shutters for medium-format cameras take proportionally longer, depending on the image size. Exposure times can be much shorter, usually up to 1/4000 or 1/8000 s.

With a small slit between the curtains, extremely fast shutter speeds could be achieved, but only in theory.

Apart from mechanical constrains, the diffraction blur created by the slit imposes a practical limit.

But while the shutter speed can be much higher than the speed of the cur-

tains, the X-sync speed cannot. The flash tube of a xenon flash lights up for just 1/1000 s or less, so the duration of the flash is shorter than the time required by the shutter curtains to reveal all of the sensor. The X-sync speed of a camera is chosen so the second curtain only starts moving after the focal plane is fully open and the flash can expose all of the sensor at once. The X-sync speed thus corresponds to the curtain speed.

While travelling across the image frame the curtains are moving at a nearly constant speed. Acceleration must be fast, and once the curtains have reached their destination, the speed must be reduced to zero in a similarly short time. The kinetic energy of the curtains needs to go somewhere and part of it gets dissipated as sound – everything else being equal, a faster shutter is thus a louder shutter.

When the first curtain slams into the buffer stop, the resulting vibrations – the so-called ‘shutter shock’ – can compromise the sharpness of the image. This issue is exacerbated by high megapixel figures – a high resolution renders the vibration-induced blur all the more visible. →

The M line relies on a focal-plane shutter exclusively, while the SL also offers an electronic shutter.

The S can use both a focal-plane shutter in the body and a leaf shutter in some of its lenses

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The leaf shutter in an S lens supports flash synchronisation with all shutter speeds up to its maximum speed of 1/1000 s, compared to 1/125 s with the focal-plane shutter

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A focal-plane shutter offers both advantages – fast shutter speeds, few issues with moving subjects – and disadvantages: relatively slow X-sync speeds, noise and shutter shock.

No issues with moving subjects, fast flash sync speeds and no shutter shock are the advantages of a leaf shutter. The disadvantages are these: limited shutter speeds, and noise.

L ea f s h u tt e r . The sec-

Ro l l i n g s h u tt er. Virtually all digital cameras these days feature sensors supporting an electronic shutter.

They use it in live-view mode and for capturing video – the required framerates would not be viable if a focal-plane shutter had to be used. Some models like, for instance, the Leica SL also support the electronic shutter as a fast, silent, and vibration-less alternative for taking still photographs.

Strictly speaking an electronic shutter is not a shutter – there is nothing actually closed shut.

The basic operating principle of an electronic shutter is this: each sensor pixel is hit by a stream of photons, each photon releasing an electron that gets stored within the pixel. When the exposure is due to start, the electronic shutter clears the pixel’s storage, flushing all the accumulated electrons down the drain so the pixel can start afresh. After the designated exposure time has elapsed the pixel is read out and, while the rain of photons continues non-stop, they do not count towards this exposure.

CMOS sensors typically support an electronic shutter of the rolling shutter type. This kind of shutter operates sequentially from the top to the bottom of the sensor, much like a focalplane shutter. Row after row of pixels are cleared, then – after the selected expo-

ond traditional type of shutter is the leaf shutter.

It is also called a ‘central shutter’ as it is located in the middle of the lens rather than within the body of the camera. The leaf shutter shares its position with the aperture blades and in fact it works like an aperture with just two settings – fully open and fully closed.

The opening and closing of the shutter blades affects the sensor globally, so all the supported shutter speeds can also be used with a flash. But while X-Sync speeds are faster than those of a focal-plane shutter, the shutter speed with all kinds of lighting is limited to, for example, 1/1000 s with the central shutter lenses for the Leica S. Even when the blades of the leaf shutter travel faster than the curtains of a focal-plane shutter, the maximum shutter speed is lower as all of the sensor needs to be exposed at the same time.

The shutter blades close around the centre of the shutter. Opposing blades move in opposing directions and when the shutter opens or closes, the kinetic energy of opposing blades cancels out. This eliminates any danger of shutter shock.

This has no bearing on noise, though; a leaf shutter can be just as intrusive as a focal-plane shutter, depending on the size, mass, and speed of the shutter blades.

sure time – row after row is read out. But the similarity to a mechanical focal-plane shutter ends when it comes to speed – the rolling shutter takes about 10 times as long to complete an exposure. This may come as a surprise as the electronic shutter reaches shutter speeds of 1/16 000 s and more, but while the exposure time of each individual pixel can be shorter than with a mechanical shutter, exposing the whole of the sensor takes much longer.

A rolling shutter rolls too slowly to enable flash synchronisation. It is also prone to motion artefacts: moving subjects get distorted in quite bizarre ways as exemplified by the pictures of a quadcopter taken with

a Leica SL in electronic shutter mode. Even when the subject does not move at all, moving the camera has a similar effect. A short exposure time or an image stabiliser can prevent motion blur but the distortion persists.

Another problem is LED lighting that has become increasingly common in recent years. LED lamps are efficient sources of light and their spectrum does not show large gaps like fluorescent lighting does, which makes them ideal for photographic purposes – except when a rolling shutter is employed. LEDs are usually pulsed and while their flicker is unnoticeable to our eyes, it creates visible banding in pictures taken

A focal-plane shutter is mounted close to the sensor. The second (closing) curtain follows the first (opening) curtain, creating a moving slit, so different parts of the sensor get exposed at different times

with the electronic shutter. Extremely fast shutter speeds, calmness and no shutter shock are the advantages of a rolling shutter.

The disadvantages are problems with subject or camera movement and pulsed lighting and incompatibility with an electronic flash. →

MEISTER CAMERA Le ica Stor e S Hamburg-be r Lin-mÜncHe n

The ColleCTor ITem of The day

blog So many picture and such a limited amount of space? More pictures, more interviews, more reviews, and more background information online at the LFI Blog. Current, surprising and informative! lfi-online.DE/Blog

at meister-camera.com

Each day exclusively at meister-camera.com we offer one special collectors item covering LEICA-cameras and lenses, historical accessories, documents and curiosities. leICa STore hamBUrG / meISTer Camera Eppendorfer Landstraße 64, 20249 Hamburg, Germany, Phone +49 - (0)40 - 467 777-55 hamburg@meister-camera.com, meister-camera.com

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G lo ba l e l e c t ro n i c A rolling electronic shutter creates arbitrary distortions of moving subjects, like the rotors of this quadcopter captured by the Leica SL. The much faster focal-plane shutter avoids this issue

Pulsed light sources like LED lamps lead to banding in pictures taken with the electronic shutter (top); again, switching to the mechanical focal-plane shutter solves this problem (bottom)

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s h u tt e r . An ideal elec-

tronic shutter would expose each sensor pixel at the same time. This is termed a global shutter as the exposure commences (and ends) globally in all parts of the sensor. Globally starting the exposure is simple, as we have seen in the previous section, but reading out each sensor pixel at the same time would be a extremely taxing task and semiconductor technology is not quite there yet. Still one can build faster rolling shutters, narrowing the gap between a rolling shutter and a truly global shutter. Rather than having one analogue-todigital converter (ADC) per pixel column – the sensor in the Leica SL, for example, features 6000 ADCs – one could further increase the parallelism so there are multiple ADCs per column.

Multiplying the number of ADCs also multiplies the amount of data that needs to be handled within the same time frame. This requires stacked sensor designs with separate layers for collecting electrons, ADCs, and buffering the digitised values before they can be processed.

But sensors with a true global shutter already exist, and in fact have been around for many years. Compact cameras used to feature interline-transfer CCDs with extremely fast shutter speeds of up to 1/32 000 s that were also useable as X-sync speeds. Interlinetransfer CCDs feature a pair of pixels for each image pixel. Only one pixel of each pair is sensitive to light while the other only serves to store an electric charge.

During an exposure, the light-sensitive pixels collect electrons. When the exposure should stop, the electrons get transferred to the second pixel of each pair.

These pixels can then be read out at leisure. As the storage pixels are shielded against light, their charge will not change and it makes no difference if they are read out sequentially rather than all at once.

CMOS sensors could adopt the same design and indeed such sensors do exist. So far they are only used for industrial applications as the image quality attainable is not suitable for photography. Having two pixels share the space previously allocated to just one, reduces the number of electrons that can be collected and thus both the dynamic range and the signal-to-noise ratio suffers.

This is less of an issue with the rather simple CCDs, but more so with the complex circuitry of a CMOS sensor. All the major sensor manufacturers are working on global shutter designs for CMOS chips, and it is only a matter of time before these become available for use in photography.

The global electronic shutter is a kind of holy grail in shutter design, as it combines all the advantages of the various shutter types and shares none of their downsides: extremely fast shutter speeds, fast X-sync speeds, no issues with moving subjects, no shutter shock – and it is silent.

Michael j. hussmann

MS Optics imported in Europe

by Taos Photographic

Co m p o s i n g w i th Colo u r pict u r e C o mp o siti o n

Handmade in Japan for Leica cameras

by Miyazaki Sadayasu Limited Edition

Well balanced colours can h o l d to g e t h e r e v e n a n u n u s ua l photographic composition.

MS Optics Perar-R 17 mm f/4.5 MC Retro Focus Ultra Wide Ultra Thin

Photo: Constantin Manos/Magnum Photos/Agentur Focus

Rather than seeking shade from the sun, it’s as if this woman is trying to hide her guilt while eating a cupcake.

The photographer, Constantine Manos, then adds another layer of humour to his already playful observation by positioning the subject to the extreme left of frame. In so doing she seems to lose her identity completely, appearing no different to the clutter with which she is clearly wanting to part. This effective, yet highly unconventional composition would fall to pieces if it weren’t for Manos’ masterful use of colour.

See how the red blouse balances the red hatbox and notice how those green cups give that hint of green and yellow at the bottom a reason to exist. And look at the way the lilac tablecloth, steely blue van and triangle of teal in front of the woman gives the whole composition a kind of consistent undercoat. In all this visual hubbub, Manos finds absolute order.

Colour presents photographers with as many issues as it does opportunities. Unlike black and white, which distils visual information with tone, the liveliness of colour creates a supercharged space that can easily overwhelm. For the composition, one needs to keep in mind the ‘personalities’ of colour. As you can see here, reds surge ahead while blues recede back. And any similar colours, like those greens and yellows, will find each other, forcing a visual connection.

Henry Car ro l l is the author of the bestselling

60 g 10,2mm

www.taos-photographic.com contact@taos-photographic.com

Read This If You Want To Take Great Photographs series of books published by Laurence King.

annonce MS Optics_GENERIC Clair.indd 1

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Leica

Oskar Barnack Award 2017

Speci al edi t i o n LFI : The special edition of LFI

with detailed information about the twelve selected series for the 2017 Leica Oskar Barnack Award, is now available at the LFI Shop ( lfi-online.de/shop).

LO BA Ex hi b i t i o n : Berlin, Neue Schule für Foto-

grafie, 14 September to 15 October 2017; Paris Photo, 10 to 13 November 2017; Lucca, Photolux Festival, 19 November to 10 December 2017

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Douglas So, founder of the F11 Foto Museum in Hong Kong and jury member for the 37th Leica Oskar Barnack Award, summarises: “The LOBA offers a reputable international platform for photographers – professionals and newcomers – to show their works, tell their stories, and realise their dreams. The award is a proven benchmark of excellence, presenting each year a relevant and significant compendium of themes contemporary photography is covering at any given time, illuminating each photographer’s unique way of expressing them!” With prizes worth a total of 80 000 euros, the award offers monetary appreciation, as well as worldwide respect and attention.

Only series made up of a minimum of ten to twelve images may be submitted. So states, “I always love photo essays. Luck and coincidence might sometimes play a significant role shaping an individual image. It takes far greater talent and skill to build a coherent and aesthetically strong series to convey a powerful message or interpret a complicated issue.” This year there were 2700 submissions from 104 countries. Most candidates came from China, followed by France, Brazil and Germany. In addition to So, the jury included Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Art Director & General Manager of Leica Galleries International; Michelle Dunn Marsh, Executive Director of the Photographic Center Northwest; and Christian Pohlert, Head of the Photo Editorial Department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

The jury chose Terje Abusdal from Norway as overall winner of the 2017 Oskar Barnack Award. His Slash & Burn series is dedicated to the Forest Finns, an ethnic group that in the 16th and 17th centuries made its home in an area of Norway close to today’s border with Sweden. Abusdal approached his protagonists like a participant observer in social research. As he explains, “Photography is a documentary medium, but it has the ability to capture a moment, idea, or place outside its context and thus create a new meaning – a mystery, if you will. By frame, shape or form, one can convey something different from that which is actually being photographed. The borders between fact and fiction can be distorted. One of the images in my series is of a haystack; but it works as a metaphor for a ghost, a magical being. Through working in series, one can really play with that: pooling a group of images together in a narrative, you can create a completely new world, a mood, a feeling, or a sense of place. A photographic series is a bit like cinema.”

From the group of 800 competitors who qualified for the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award, the jury selected Ukrainian photographer Sergey Melnitchenko to be honored. Melnitchenko took the role of a participant observer to the extreme: in addition to being the photographer, Melnitchenko danced with an ensemble, as it worked its way through the cheap entertainment districts of China. His Behind the Scenes series captured his observations of life backstage – observations that are normally inaccessible to outsiders. The young photographer explains: “In China I started taking photos on the street with my mobile phone, and photos of my daily life with an instant camera. The Behind the Scenes series was something very new for me. It’s a mix of documentary and conceptual art photography. What’s interesting is that I want to continue working in such a style: I love it!” We look forward to whatever comes next! bernd luxa

From the Slash & Burn series by 2017 LOBA winner, Terje Abusdal (also see the next page) lFI

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2 0 1 7 L e i c a o s k a r B a r n a c k Awa r d

Te r je A b u s da l In the 16th and 17th centuries, great numbers of Finns migrated to Norway – to Finnskogen, the Forest of the Finns. Slash and burn was an essential element of their agricultural practices. Generations later, they still live in the area and are an acknowledged minority group in Norway. Because of their strong bond with nature, certain Forest Finns are today still considered to have magical powers. In his Slash & Burn series, the Norwegian photographer (born 1978) explores their lifestyle and traditions. Enchanting and worthy of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.

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Pat r i c k W i l l o c q Finalist 2017

The You Cannot Pick a Stone with One Finger series by the French photographer (born 1969) was created with the Dagomba, an ethnic group in northern Ghana. In his series, named after a local proverb, Willocq is concerned with conveying the iconographic world of the group. Consequently, the largest portion of the work was not taken up with the actual photography, but with research and careful construction of the sets. This was done together with native artists, using materials available on location. The photographer’s motto is ‘Turn your subjects into actors!’. The stage has been set.

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A l ek s e y Ko n d r at y e v Finalist 2017

Seemingly lost in the middle of nowhere, these man-size shelters have actually been set up on the frozen Ishim River as it meanders through the area surrounding Astana, the hyper-modern capital of Kazakhstan. Made of thin layers of plastic – supermarket bags, old travel sacks and foils glued together – the makeshift tents serve to protect traditional ice fishermen from temperatures that drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius. With his Ice Fishers series, the Kirghiz photographer (born 1993) builds a bridge between the simplest of humble comforts and the growing culture of frenzied consumerism.

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D o m i n i c Na h r Finalist 2017

On 11 March 2011, the worst earthquake in Japan’s history took place off the country’s coast. The resulting tsunami not only cost tens of thousands of lives, but also caused meltdowns in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The Swiss photographer (born 1983) has already visited the area ten times – the first time was just after the catastrophe. How does one translate an invisible threat into images? With quiet, withdrawn pictures, his Nothing to See Here series shows fragile daily life unfolding in and outside the exclusion zone.

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E kat e r i n a Se v r o u k Finalist 2017

Sevrouk (born 1975) uses well-known Alpine landscapes found in German Romantic paintings to make a contemporary statement about the emotional state of black African men hoping for asylum in Austria.

The contradictory tension between artistic imagery and current politics is irritating and compels the viewer to take a stance. The series’s title, Fremd bin ich eingezogen (As a stranger I arrived), is taken from Franz Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey) song cycle, and in the same manner speaks of the inner conflict of those portrayed, caught between wishful longing and painful reality.

G i de o n M e n de l Finalist 2017

Mendel (born 1959) has been travelling to flood zones around the world since 2007. On the whole, he gets there when the water levels are still high and a surreal silence reigns. The water covers everything – including social and cultural differences. In the long-term project Drowning World, he portrays people in the middle of what remains of their homes. By abstracting them from the diversity of their living conditions and presenting them united by their distress, these portraits underline the universal and farreaching consequences that can result from climate change.

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Yo a n n C i m i e r Finalist 2017

Cimier (born 1974) stumbled across what became his Nomad’s Land project while vacationing on the Tunisian island of Djerba. From his hotel window, Cimier was able to look straight down the beach where families with carts, children, animals and cars had built shelters, creating their own microcosms reminiscent of Bedouin tradition. The framing, distance and light create a common thread throughout this photographic series, giving it uniformity; as does the repeated background of sand, sea and horizon, and also the style decision to overexpose all the pictures in the series.

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E m i l i e n U r ba n o Finalist 2017

Since the summer of 2014, the French photographer has been documenting the role of the Kurds in the conflict zones located in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Subjects are members of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and their youth organization (YPG-H), both considered to be terrorists by the Turkish government; and the Iraqi Peshmerga, who are backed by the PKK and YPG-H, and are supported in their role by the international coalition fighting ISIS. Urbano accompanied the Kurdish militia into numerous conflict zones – protecting the Yazidi against ISIS for example, or retaking Mosul.

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ViKtoria Sorochinski Finalist 2017

Viktoria Sorochinski’s (born 1979) long-term project began as a search for traces of childhood memories in her grandparents’ village, Tarasovka, and gradually grew into an archive of images covering a traditional, farming lifestyle in Ukraine that it slowly disappearing. Paying homage to an ascetic lifestyle and implements of the past, the Lands of No-Return series of the Ukrainian photographer is a mixture of documentary photography and fiction, with imagery that appeals in a rather fairytale-like manner to feelings in the viewer of sentimentality, nostalgia and longing.

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Clara Chichin Finalist 2017

The viewer may well see the French photographer’s radically subjective Under the Eyes that Few Minutes Exhaust series as a sequence of images from a wild dream that follows no apparent rules. Photographing in contrast-rich, grainy black and white, Chichin’s pictures show a confrontation between brightness and darkness, each struggling for dominance. Chichin (born 1985) follows a literary approach in her work: “Little by little, I compose an ensemble with repetitions, echoes, leitmotifs as if I were writing a poem without a linear narrative, an imaginary voyage, a dream-like meandering.”

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Ve r a T o r o k Finalist 2017

At first glance, the viewer may find the complex structures in Vera Torok’s (born 1981) Accidentally on Purpose series rather overwhelming. They are based on an artistic approach that is as simple as it is striking: the photographer produces double exposures – deliberately. What started out as a mistake evolved into a perfected, stylistic means for her series, which she produced in London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. It is the special atmosphere found in the big city that consistently finds its way into her pictures, with colour being another important element of her imagery.

2 0 1 7 L e i c a o s k a r B a r n a c k n e w c o m e r Awa r d

Se r ge y M e l n i t c h e n ko With his Behind the Scenes series, the Ukrainian photographer (born 1991) offers us a glimpse into a world that normally remains hidden: the cosmos of the world backstage. Two years ago, Melnitchenko went to dance in China, where he still lives today, performing at, among others, a dance club in Dongguan. Behind the Scenes has a cinematic-like touch with which Melnitchenko illuminates the everyday life of his colleagues. This impression is further enhanced by the fact that he only works with available light, veiling the relaxed and introspective attitudes of the dancers in emotional and dramatic shadows.

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p h oto – B o o k s – E x h i b i t i o n s – f e s t i va l s – Awa r d s –

Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg: Rineke Dijkstra, Hilton Head Island, 24 June 1992

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Lau r e n G r ee n f i e l d

Photos: © Rineke Dijkstra (2); © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; © Lauren Greenfield; © Albert Renger-Patzsch/Archiv Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich/ADAGP

i c p, N e w Y o r k

Gold, yachts and Las Vegas: Lauren Greenfield has been documenting the world of extravagant consumerism since the early nineties. With more than 200 images, Generation Wealth weaves together stories of affluence, beauty, body image, competition, corruption and excess.

Wa l ke r E va n s S FM o m a , S a n F r a n c i s c o

The alarm goes off, the kids are late, the chores have to be done: everyday life is both burdensome and joyful.

Walker Evans explored the topic to a perhaps unparalleled extent. “In a way, I’m interested in everything and nothing,” is how he once described his approach. At the same time, he recognised the creative potential in repetitive sequences and patterns. Evans photographed shop windows, market stalls and billboards, labourers, office workers and pedestrians. The street was the source of his poetry. When his book American Photographs was published in 1938, it transported ordinary American life into the world of the cultural establishment. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art now presents more than 400 photographs, paintings, ephemera and objects in a retrospective whose title simply consists of the artist’s name. Spanning a career that lasted half a century, the exhibition includes images of the Great Depression in America, travel photographs from Cuba, Polaroids, portraits taken in the subways of NYC, as well as portfolios from the photographer’s 20-year-long collaboration with Fortune Magazine. “Conceived as a complete retrospective of Evans’s work, this exhibition highlights the photographer’s fascination with American popular culture and vernacular,” says Clément Chéroux, senior curator of photography at SFMOMA. “Evans was intrigued by the vernacular as both a subject and a method. By elevating it to the rank of art, he created a unique body of work celebrating the beauty of everyday life.”

30 September 2017 — 4 February 2018; photo: Walker Evans, Truck and Sign, 1928—1930, gelatin silver print, private collection

20 Sep 2017 — 4 Feb 2018; photo: Lauren Greenfield, Jackie and friends with Versace handbags at a private opening at the Versace store, Beverly Hills, California 2007

A l be rt Re n ge r - Patz s c h J e u d e Pa u m e , Pa r i s

Industrial plants, housing developments and deserted landscapes: The Perspective of Things encompasses 190 images by Renger-Patzsch, who never sought out beauty, yet created aesthetically stunning photographs of stark and sober poetry.

17 Oct 2017 — 21 Jan 2018; photo: Albert Renger-Patzsch, Landstraße bei Essen (Road near Essen), 1929

R i n eke D i jk s t ra H a ss e l b l a d F o u nd at i o n , Gothenburg

Teenagers on the beach, soldiers in the Foreign Legion, toreros after a bullfight, women after giving birth: Rineke Dijkstra once said her core aim is to evoke a sense of recognition. Now she has become the first Dutch photographer to win the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, endowed with 100 000 euros. “Rineke Dijkstra’s photographs and films speak brilliantly to the intricacy of the portrait image: its embodiment of time; its capacity to reveal history; the contingency of the act of exchange between sitter, photographer and spectator; and, ultimately, photography’s revelation of the self,” head of jury Duncan Forbes said in his statement. After the award ceremony on 9 October, Dijkstra’s remarkable, largescale portrait series will be on display at the Foundation’s exhibition space.

11 October 2017 — 4 February 2018 photo: Rineke Dijkstra, Almerisa Leidschendam, 24 March 2007

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new developments in photography

Above: Weronika Gęsicka, from the series Traces; from the left: Wang Juyan, from the series Project 2085; Namsa Leuba: Damien, from the series NGL, 2015; Vasantha Yogananthan: Boy Playing Girl, from the series A Myth of Two Souls, Janakpur, Nepal, 2016 www.foam.org

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Photos: © Weronika Gęsicka, © Wang Juyan, © Namsa Leuba, © Vasantha Yogananthan

F oam Ta l e n t

‘Discovering, identifying and presenting talent has been part of Foam's policy and practice since it was first established. Our goal is to devote timely, focused attention to new developments in photography,’ is how the photography museum’s website describes its Foam Talent format.

Now the museum is presenting a twomonth-long exhibition from 1 September to 12 November, with 20 young, international artists who have taken part in its annual programme. They are all under 35 years of age and work in the area of contemporary photography. Foam Talent offers them a stepping stone onto the international arena. ‘The Foam Talent programme is a career building platform that helps launch aspiring image-makers into the international photography industry,’ Foam acknowledges.

The works submitted include all the diversity of modern, photographic possibilities. They show how contemporary photographers approach this constantly developing medium, while also revealing a series of trends.

This is why many of the artists selected and presented now deal with socio-politically relevant subjects. Hari Srikhao from Thailand, for example, comments on the divine status accorded to his homeland’s monarchy. Thomas Kuipers from Holland explores how online images feed a collective fear of terrorism. In the forge of talent, photography also serves as a stylistic means for thought and critique. After the presentation in Amsterdam, the show will go on to other countries.

According to Foam, the search for talent does not only serve its own ends. Its main purpose is to enthuse a broader general public for the latest developments in photography.

S MAGAZINE ISSUE 9 20

Le i c a G a l l e r i e s g e r m a ny

I ta lY

We t z l a r

Milan

Huber, Umbach, von Schweinitz

At time of publication unknown

Am Leitz-Park 5, 35578 Wetzlar 5 September — 10 November 2017

Via Mengoni, 4, 20121 Milan

Frankfurt

Collectable Iconics

Portugal

Porto

Großer Hirschgraben 15, 60311 Frankfurt am Main 1 September — mid November 2017

At time of publication unknow

NRW

Turkey

Lars Beusker: Was bleibt? – Monochrom.

i s ta n b u l

Mies-van-der-Rohe-Weg 1, 59302 Oelde-Stromberg 16 September 2017 — 13 January 2018

228

PHOTOGRAPHERS PAGES · 9,90

€

L O

Rua d. Sá da Bandeira, 48/52, 4000-427 Porto

O

Ahmet Polat: The Myth of Men Bomontiada – Merkez, A, Birahane Sk. No:1, 34381 Şişli/İstanbul 8 September — 2 December 2017

K

N u r embe r g

Andreas Riedel: Dunnerholler – so ein fränkischer Fotograf Obere Wörthstr. 8, 90403 Nuremberg 30 September — 23 November 2017

Zingst

USA

L o s A n ge l e s

Doug Menuez: Fearless Genius – The Next Generation

Heidi und Robert Mertens: Das andere Sehen

8783 Bever­ly Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90048 1 September — 2 October 2017

Am Bahnhof 1, 18374 Zingst 21 September — 13 December 2017

Boston

Austria

74 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 31 August — 29 October 2017

Sa l z b u r g

Wuales #002: Nude Silhouettes Gaisbergstr. 12, 5020 Salzburg 11 August — 14 October 2017

S ã o Pa u l o

A r e n be r g Ca s t l e

Rua Maranhão, 600 Higienópolis, 01240–000 São Paulo

At time of publication unknown

Arenbergstr. 10, 5020 Salzburg 6 August — 3 November 2017

Ja pa n

Vienna

To kyo

Walfischgasse 1, 1010 Vienna

Marc Riboud: The World of Marc Riboud

czech Republic

6–4–1 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 22 September 2017 — 14 January 2018

At time of publication unknown

P r ag u e

Ellen von Unwerth: Wild Wild West

O

Alain Laboile: Quotidian

Brazil

Eva Andessner: … look at me!

B

Kyoto

O K · 2

Marc Riboud: Japanese Women as seen by Marc Riboud

Školská 28, 110 00 Prag 1 14 September — 19 November 2017

570–120 Gionmachi Minamigawa, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 23 September 2017 — 18 January 2018

p o l And

Singapore

wa r s aw

S i n ga p o r e

Bogdan Dziworski: f/5.6

At time of publication unknown

Mysia 3, 00–496 Warsaw 8 September — 22 October 2017

The Fullerton Hotel, 1 Fullerton Square, #01–07

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CUTTING-EDGE PHOTOGRAPHY BY

Enrique Badulescu Joachim Baldauf Brix & Maas Bil Brown Arved Colvin-Smith Anna Daki Rui Faria Christian Geisselmann Esther Haase Marie Hochhaus Benjamin Kaufmann James Meakin Monica Menez Hector Perez Elizaveta Porodina René & Radka Christian Rinke Tristan Rösler Takahito Sasaki SPECIAL

GUEST

Ellen von Unwerth

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LFI-ONLINE.COM/SHOP

Stephen Shore

This magnificent, large-scale volume opens up an unusual new way to explore the US-American photographer’s work. Since the sixties, Shore (born 1947) has ranked among the most important representatives of New Color Photography, gaining acclaim with publications such as the legendary Uncommon Places. An international group of fifteen artists, critics and curators has now been invited to select up to ten images apiece from a pool of rarely or never published photographs originally shot for this series. The participants, among them David Cam108 |

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pany, Paul Graham, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon and Thomas Struth, were given access to over 400 recently scanned slides spanning from the seventies to the early eighties.

The resulting portfolios and their statements are as diverse as the personalities of those who curated them.

As well as collections of cityscapes and road views with characteristic American automobiles, shop fronts and house façades, the volume also features some exciting revelations, such as portfolios with a main focus on portraits (as curated by An-My Lê)

or eccentric still lifes in hotel rooms (Hans Ulrich Obrist). Some participants (such as Francine Prose) felt that one single image was enough to convey the essence of the photographer’s work. Shore contributed his own choices – this time favouring the portrait format, to which he usually gives lower priority. The outcome is an idiosyncratic homage to Shore’s work, and a photo book that is both collectible and highly addictive.

272 pages, 150 four-colour images, 31 × 38.5 cm, English, Aperture

Photo: © Stephen Shore, courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York

Selec ted Works, 1973–1981

M asa h i sa F u ka s e R av e ns

Sa n n e de W i l de

Photos: © Sanne de Wilde; © Masahisa Fukase, courtesy of Masahisa Fukase Archives and Mack Books; © William Daniels; © Robin Hammond

T h e Is l a nd o f t h e C o l o r b l i nd

What may at first glance seem like a technical malfunction soon turns into an eye-opening visual experience.

In this striking conceptual project, the Belgian photographer Sanne de Wilde (born 1987) offers an artistic description of her time on the Pingelap and Pohnpei Islands, two tiny coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. The ‘island of the color blind’ that gives the series its title refers to the Pingelap atoll, where an unusually high percentage of the population is unable to perceive colours – instead seeing the world in light and dark contrasts and hues. Achromatopsy, the complete absence of colour vision, is a hereditary and generally extremely rare condition. On Pingelap, however, it presents itself in four to ten percent of the island’s inhabitants. The most likely reason leads back to a catastrophic Tsunami, which wiped out almost the entire island in the late 18th century. Among the few survivors was Pingelap’s colour blind king, who in due course passed the condition on to his numerous descendants. “They don’t see any colour at all,” the photographer explains.

“To them, everything appears in shades of grey.” As for her technique, she says, “I didn’t change any colours.

The infrared camera did. And the other images I just converted to black and white using Photoshop.” The resulting series takes the viewer into a dreamworld of chromatic possibilities, and at the same time allows us to imagine how life on the island may look to those for whom colour is no more than a word.

160 pages, 85 colour and black-and-white images, 22.5 × 28 cm, English, Hannibal Publishing

A powerful book infused with bleak melancholy – originally published in 1986, it conveys the deep despair felt by the author (1934–2012) in images of barren landscapes, blurred street scenes and cryptic still lifes. With this reprint, one of the Japanese artist’s most significant series has once again become available.

148 pages, 80 tri-tone images, 26.3 cm × 26.3 cm, Japanese/English, Mack Books

W i l l i am Da n i e l s rca

Ravaged by violence and civil war, the Central African Republic is the world’s poorest nation. Between 2013 and 2016, the French photographer (born 1977) undertook ten journeys through the crisisridden country. His images are intense, direct and unsparing – and therefore all the more necessary.

104 pages, 56 colour images, 19.3 × 25 cm, French/English, Éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière

R o b i n Hamm o n d m y lag o s

How can the energy and chaos of a metropolis be condensed into a book? The NewZealand-based photographer (born 1977) attempted to do just that – creating a colourful volume that captures Nigeria’s largest city in all its diversity. “Lagos is a land of opportunity,” says Hammond, whose long-standing passion for Africa has led to several projects on the continent of contradictions. “There is a huge diversity within this mess of a city, and I felt it was a place that illustrates the complexity of Africa.” Wealth is juxtaposed with severe poverty, tradition and religion with a booming fashion and movie industry. Hammond’s full-format impressions of the city are interspersed with Polaroid portraits and quotes by individual representatives of its 18 million inhabitants.

The book design is equally unique – each of the 600 copies is wrapped in a cover made of an original film poster.

68 p., 64 colour images, 37 × 24.6 cm, English, Éditions Bessard

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“ We h e l p a rt i s t s ga i n v i s i b i l i t y.” i n t e rv i e w

Photos: © Günter Rössler, © Sibylle Bergemann, © Peter Bialobrzeski

Markus Hartmann fosters and acts as an agent for artists, primarily photographers, to help them gain a stronger public presence, with exhibitions, books and, above all, individual commitment.

LFI: You were recently at the Rencontres d’Arles at the Prix Decouvertes with Norman Behrendt’s new book and Brave New Turkey exhibition.

How was Arles for you this year?

Markus Hartmann: I would say that, primarily, we presented an exhibition

by Norman Behrendt. The postcard book, disguised as a Turkish passport, was not planned, but resulted from our collaboration preparing the exhibition. Behrendt is a good example of how things just flow sometimes – when the work, the ideas and the network are right. Consequently, we were able to arrange his first larger publication in the New York Times

Magazine (14 June 2017, www.nytimes. com) followed by the confirmation of his being shortlisted for the Prix Decouvertes. Behrendt is currently continuing his work on the project.

I found the festival in Arles was particularly successful this year. I normally only find two or three good exhibitions, but there were many good to very-good ones this year. Datar, Masahisa Fukase, Iran Année 38, Mathieu Asselin’s Monsanto, Paz Errázuriz, are, each in themselves, outstanding presentations that risk being undervalued in a festival of 40 exhibitions. I consider that under the direction of Sam Stourdzé, now for the third time, Arles is consistently getting better!

LFI: With Hartmann Projects you have been representing artists since 2014, curating and arranging exhibitions.

Now Hartmann Books has been here for a year. Congratulations!

Hartmann: Many thanks. So far it has all been a lot of fun and we’re excited to see how everything develops. More and more, we see books as an extended marketing tool for an artistic project, rather than on a commercial basis.

Unfortunately, on the whole, →

2016, Hartmann Books published Sibylle 1956– 1995 about the East German fashion and culture magazine: Günter Rössler (Sibylle 2/1964, far left); Sibylle Bergemann (Sibylle 5/1980, above); from Peter Bialobrzeski’s recently published book, Die zweite Heimat (left)

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sophisticated books don’t earn any money. If you hand a curator, a museum director, a gallery owner or a collector, a book to introduce an artist it is always much more convincing than a pdf and it won’t be easily forgotten. We try to join together different levels in the worlds of art and publishing: curating, arranging shows, discovering artists, introductions to galleries or mounting exhibitions, presenting groups of work to collections. Books are an important building block within this model and they help draw the attention of the press and the media. ‘We’ means that Hartmann Projects is a joint project of three parties: my wife Angelika Hartmann, Nadine Engler and myself, where each contributes talents and contacts.

We need to feel which way the wind is blowing to get a sense of what our image-hungry world is looking for, or needs … and we need a tail wind to do so. What we do is not easy!

“ We wa n t to ge t a s e n s e o f w h at o u r p i c t u r e - h u n g ry wo r l d i s lo o k i n g f o r .”

When asked what he considers makes a good picture, Arnold Odermatt answered succinctly, “A good picture must be in focus!” The publishers used this as a subtitle to the 2017 book about Odermatt’s life. Stansstad 1964 and 1963 (above), Buochs 1965 (right)

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LFI: You and your team have been involved in the photo book field for a long time – there’s a lot of whinging going on, but also from time to time, new and great ideas.

Hartmann: The book market has changed dramatically! In brief: the book market has been turned upside down by the digitisation of products and the distribution process, and it will remain in a state of chaos. The process is in motion and there’s no way of knowing if it will ever stop. Following World War II and up until the last decade, the book industry developed in a positive, or at least stable, manner; then came the full impact of the internet combined with the banking crisis. I can ascertain that a) more books than ever are being produced (unfortunately many are bad), money is cheap (in the sense of low interest rates), and b) fewer of the books making up this flood of publications are really being sold in stores. As is the situation in other parts of the cultural scene, supply far exceeds demand.

We also see that books are becoming increasingly elaborate, beautiful, complex, and more conceptual. As far

as book design and technology is concerned, we are in a time of blossoming.

As to whether it’s the last, special blossoming, or an on-going one, is still to be seen. I’m increasingly feeling that we live in exciting times, and we need to value this and make active use of it.

LFI: What is your strategy?

Press, press, press, media, media, media, and events! The most beautiful book, the best exhibition is nothing without a clever communications strategy. The competition is so strong that it’s necessary to plan, while looking after all the media and contact possibilities at the same time, so as to be acknowledged. We want to focus on a few artists and projects, so that we can remain small and personal. In the past, it was enough to produce a good book, and then with the help of distributors, reps, prospects and a bit of press work, the word was spread and the book would begin to sell, slowly at first but consistently and some-

Hartmann:

Norman Behrendt, from Brave New Turkey, presented at the Prix Decouvertes 2017 during the Rencontres d’Arles Photo Festival.

The small postcard booklet, Greetings from Turkey, appeared at the same time

times continuing for a few years with a number of new editions. However, as mentioned, the world has become a larger and more complex place over the last twenty years, so old recipes don’t work any longer. This acknowledgement also means that artists and their projects need an agent more than ever, unless of course the artist happens to be also a marketing genius (as, for example, Burtinsky or Salgado).

Agents can be galleries, publishers or curators, which is precisely what we’re trying to bring together.

LFI: What does a photographer need to bring in order to have a book produced

by Hartmann Books?

Hartmann: He/she must start by making work that is really delightful, has content, form and is conceptual. It also has to fit on the human level. One reason for disembarking from a large but sluggard cruise ship and stepping into a small but nifty sailing craft was the fact that we wanted the luxury of choosing projects based on our criteria. Of course, money always plays a role, even though our overheads are significantly lower now, and we can plan more creatively than with a larger apparatus. I always encourage young artists to present their work as

often and as widely as possible; a person can only react to someone’s work when they see it. That was how it was with Norman Behrendt’s Brave New Turkey. I met him in September 2016 at the festival in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Sometimes a small suggestion to an artist is enough; to submit work here or there, to enter a competition, and if the work is really good, then the loveliest coincidences can occur that can be the beginning of a career!

LFI: If you had to make a prognosis about the photo book market in the coming years …

Hartmann: The dramatic flood of titles will reduce at some point, simply because the economy will win over the longing to be published. There will be an increase in small editions of elaborate digital productions.

Offset printing will survive, but more as an art-form than as an industry.

Books will survive, but also more as an expanded art-form than as a medium for information. Information is the internet, true passion and delight are books or, for those who can afford it, the original. The analogue world (also in photography) will not disappear, but it will become a wonderful niche.

Having been our home for the last centuries, we now have to get used to the virtual world. For coming generations this will hardly be noticeable, but for those who grew up in the analogue world and who feel at home there, it will always be the challenging process of letting go or of loss.

Interview: Inas Fayed

Photos: © Urs Odermatt, Windisch; © Norman Behrendt

Markus Ha rtma n n was born in 1962 into

a family of Berlin-based publishers and printers. Hatje Cantz from 1990 to 2013; a freelance curator and author since 2014; set up his Hartmann Projects enterprise in 2015. www.hartmannprojects.com Exh ibition s : Peter Bialobrzeski, Die zweite

Heimat, until 7 Jan. 2018, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Sibylle, until 26 Nov. 2017, Opelvillen Rüsselsheim, followed by Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus, Schloss Pillnitz, Haus der Geschichte Leipzig, all Germany

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Leica Fotografie In t e r n at i o n a l

p ee r ku g l e r my picture

A fogged up windowpane, a rose, a man: following a long period of mourning, Kugler finally found his way back to photography.

69th year | Issue 7. 2017

LFI PHOTOGR A PHIE GMBH Springeltwiete 4, 20095 Hamburg, Germany Phone: +49 / 40 / 2 26 21 12 80 Fax: +49 / 40 / 2 26 21 12 70 ISSN: 0937-3977 www.lfi-online.com, mail@lfi-online.com Editor-in-Chief Inas Fayed, Frank P. Lohstöter (V.i.S.d.P.) A rt Direction Brigitte Schaller EDITORIA L OFFICE Carla S. Erdmann, Michael J. Hußmann, Katrin Iwanczuk, Bernd Luxa, Edyta Pokrywka, David Rojkowski, Holger Sparr, Olaf Staaben, Olaf Stefanus, Katrin Ullmann Photo Editor Reportage Carol Körting layout Thorsten Kirchhoff Translation, Sub-Editing Robin Appleton, Hope Caton, Anna Sauper, Osanna Vaughn CONTRIBUTORS to this issue Henry Carroll, Francesca Gennari, Katja Hübner, Dean Kissick, Ulrich Rüter, Jan Christop Wiechmann M anagement Board Frank P. Lohstöter, Anja Ulm Media SA LES A nd M arketing Kirstin Ahrndt-Buchholz, Samira Holtorf Phone: +49 / 40 / 2 26 21 12 72 Fax: +49 / 40 / 2 26 21 12 70 E-Mail: buchholz@lfi-online.de holtorf@lfi-online.de REPRODUcTION: Alphabeta, Hamburg Printer: Optimal Media GmbH, Röbel/Müritz PA PER: Igepa Profimatt

Vernissage in Kreuzberg, Berlin, May 2007

After the unexpected death of my father in the spring of 2009, I found it hard to photograph. I rarely took my camera anywhere with me. Even when I did take a photograph, I was never satisfied. Three quarters of a year later I fell in love and went to Paris – but it did not last for long. With a broken heart I returned to Berlin a couple of months later. One evening, a friend convinced me to go to an exhibition. For some reason or other I had my Leica with me. We were sitting outside as it started to rain. I turned around and saw the fogged up window, the rose and the man, and I took a photo. It was the first photo following the death of my father that was once again mine.

Peer Kugler, born in 1966, studied at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and the ICP New York. Numerous exhibitions and publications in, among others, Le Monde, New York Times, Stern, Greenpeace Magazine. Kugler lives in Berlin.

LFI 8 / 2 0 1 7 w i l l a p p e a r o n 3 n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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Distribution LFI (USPS no 0017912) is published 8 times per annum.

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HELMUT NEWTON.

Paris, Vogue Paris, 2001 © Mario Testino

MARIO TESTINO. UNSEEN

JEAN PIGOZZI. POOL PARTY

UNTIL 19 NOVEMBER 2017 | HELMUT NEWTON FOUNDATION | MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY JEBENSSTRASSE 2, 10623 BERLIN | TUE, WED, FRI, SAT, SUN 11-7, THU 11-8