A picture is worth a
thousand words. How often have we heard
that old saying? But does that make a
camera worth over 2 million dollars? Apparently
it does, at least as far as the favorite camera of LIFE magazine photographer
David Douglas Duncan goes. He is best
known for his war photographs and the intimate images of his friend Pablo
Picasso.
The WestLicht gallery of
Vienna, Austria a while ago auctioned off a Leica M3D which used to belong to
David Douglas Duncan. It sold for $2.19
million which is a record for a commercially produced camera.
Leica M3D with attached
Leicavit
Suzy Banks, a writer at
the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which has
Duncan's archive, explained:
By the time Duncan began
photographing the war in Vietnam, he was shooting with Leica M3Ds (D for
Duncan), which the company manufactured and designed especially for him,
limiting production to four. The battle-hardened camera, curiously enough, also
proved ideally suited for one of Duncan's subsequent and more intimate topics:
Pablo Picasso and his family. With its soft-click shutter, this camera helped
the photographer document the artist's private moments as unobtrusively as
possible.
Here are some of Duncan's
more iconic images from Vietnam...
...and of Picasso:
While the claim of this
being the most valuable commercially produced camera in history is correct, the
highest price ever paid for any camera is also for a Leica. That title goes to one of the original
pre-production Leicas, the so-called 0-Serie, which was sold for $2.79 million,
also by WestLicht.
Leica O-Series Camera
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Thank you Heinz, but what are the differences between the "normal" M3 and the D variant ?
ReplyDeleteThe M3D was specifically made for the needs of David Douglas Duncan. The main difference it that it was able to accept a Leicavit rapid advance. In addition, the 50mm Summilux lens was equipped with a non standard focusing lever.
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