Non-Leica Essay in LFI?

[gtownby]

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So I'm looking at my new LFI and remark to myself how sharp but thin the photos look in the essay "Tales from Jozi" by the remarkable photojournalist Jurgen Schadeberg. If these are digital, why aren't they as beautiful as the M8 photos of India taken by Wiliam Palank, also in the edition? They don't look like film.

 

(Since the "Jozi" book was published in 2007, that more or less eliminates the possibility that an M8 was used. And given the nature of photojournalism, I doubt that the photographer used a DMR.)

 

Then, I notice that LFI does not even mention the camera used by Schadeberg and calls the photos "snapshots."

 

My guess is that while honoring Schadeberg in the cover story essay -- in which the photographer used Leicas to document South Africa starting in the 1950s -- the editors made the decision that publishing his recent "Jozi" series was too important to reject simply because the equipment is non-Leica, (perhaps even point-and-shoot, which would explain all those infinite-focus images).

 

Did the technical quality of those photos (not the subject matter!) strike anyone else as disappointing?

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[Guest joewehry]

The only thing that strikes me as disappointing is your question:

 

"If these are digital, why aren't they as beautiful as the M8 photos of India taken by Wiliam Palank, ..."

 

 

 

BTW, your B/W Man on the Street series is nice.

[eekimel]

Hi Gordon:

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And clearly you're a "bokeh" guy, as is William Palank, the photographer of the India photo essay. I suspect he's intentionally going for the widest aperture he feels comfortable with at every one of those photo opportunities. And with a camera that includes shutter speeds up to 1/8000 of a second, that's possible -- even with those Summilux lenses.

 

Jurgen Schadeber, I suspect, may not be a "bokeh" guy. There are times when selective depth of field appears to be key to his images -- ie. on page 16, when one really needed separation between the man juggling the bicycle and the people in the background.

 

By the way, I make my living as a word guy. I'm also a detail guy. So I took a little extra time to note to myself that on page 18 there's an image of Schadeber with two Leica III around his neck in 1955. This tells me that it's highly likely a majority of his 1950s images in South Africa were captured with those cameras. M3s were available (just barely) and he didn't rush out and buy them.

 

As I said, I'm a word guy, so I read in the text that Schadeber and his wife returned to South Africa in 1985. Maybe by then he modernized a bit to an M-series camera. Maybe even an M6 but doubtful, given that their availability was likely the same as the M3 back in 1955. And chances are he wouldn't switch mediums to digital for this particular project, especially since digital cameras that could produce images viable for publishing weren't developed until the turn of the century.

 

So chances are the images published by LFI were shot with a film camera. The reds on page 57 suggest Kodachrome -- but it's been more than 25 years since my color photography teacher pulled out images printed from different film stock and played the "what's this" game, so I wouldn't swear to it.

 

If you had some support as to why Schadeber's images "don't look like film," it may help me understand your point of view.

 

Besides the fact that you're a "bokeh" guy, I can't determine your definition of "technical quality." Sure an image with a maximum depth of field can be distracting if, say there are tree branches in perfect focus giving the appearance that a portrait subject has grown antlers but in my mind technical quality isn't simply determined by shooting at wide depth of field.

 

Now LFI has published non-Leica essays in the past. One in particular comes to mind, since it was also in Leica World. It featured underwater images from a Nikonos.

 

Obviously I don't share your viewpoint. But feel free to convince me.