© jmse
By José Manuel Serrano
Esparza
Last August 29th, 2018, at the age of 95, passed away Erich Lessing, one of the greatest Magnum photographers ever and a seminal photojournalist who documented a number of the most significant events in the second half of XX Century, throughout a brilliant career in which he worked for Associated Press from 1947 and Magnum Agency from 1951 (having being invited to join it by David Seymour " Chim ", one of its founders, and becoming a full member in 1955) and his images appeared in such prestigious magazines like Life, Picture Post, Time, Paris Match, Fortune and others.
© jmse
Erich Lessing was always
an amazing photographer excelling in the capture of defining moments, fleeting
instants that he made everlasting, often turning them into iconic images.
Its innate sense of
anticipation and composition, quickness of movements, and remarkable ability to
see the picture, always striving upon being at the adequate place and moment
and as near as possible from the core of action going unnoticed, made him
choose firstly
© Westlicht
a Leica IIIf with Leitz
Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 and Elmar 90 mm f/4 lenses and a Leica M3 rangefinder camera
as his favorite photographic tool from mid fifties, coupled to a standard 7
elements in 6 groups and ten blades Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Version 1 collapsible
lens.
Only a month before the coverage of the Hungarian Revolution against
the Soviet Occupation, the Photokina 1956 took place in Cologne (Germany)
between September 29 and October 7 of that year. The Leica M3 was once again,
as had happened in 1954 and 1955, the highlight of the event. It was by far the
best 35 mm camera in the world at the moment and 82,042 units were sold between
1954 (year of its introduction) and 1956. Here we can see an original metallic
pin from the Photokina 1956, courtesy of Dr. Mervin Stewart from Pittsburgh
(Pennsylvania), a sadly demised veteran member of the LHSA, who visited it
sixty-two years ago.
© jmse
The Leica M3 rangefinder camera meant to practical effects among many
other things a major boosting of photojournalism, thanks to its combination of
viewfinder and rangefinder in one bright window, a 92x magnification VF and an
effective rangefinder base of 63.71 mm enabling to highly accurately focus
lenses up to 135 mm, and particularly its symbiosis with standard 50 mm lenses
is still to be surpassed, something that was perfectly known by Erich Lessing,
whose main lens coupled to his Leica M3 was in 1956 a collapsible Summicron-M
50 mm f/2 First Version.
© Westlicht
Top front area of a Leica M3 where we can see the window of its 0.92x
viewfinder (on far right, providing the main image for the VF and being
combined with the bright-line frames, the rangefinder metering field and the
LED indicators), the brightline illumination window (in the middle, gathering
ambient light to produce in the VF the brightline frames for lenses of
different focal lengths) and the rangefinder window (on far left, providing the
image for the very bright rangefinder metering field). © jmse
Eyepiece of the 0.92x viewfinder of the 24 x 36 mm full format Leica M3
rangefinder camera. Its brightness, sharpness and contrast of this superb VF
have remained unbeaten since 1954.
© jmse
Revolution in Hungary, The 1956 Budapest Uprising, a masterful photobook
published by Thames & Hudson and including a comprehensive assortment of
the best pictures made by Erich Lessing in the Hungarian capital in late
October and first week of November of 1956 during the days in which civil
population fought in the streets against the invading Soviet troops and tanks,
with a final death toll of 30,000 Hungarians and 7,000 Soviet soldiers.
© jmse
His landmark reportage on
Budapest Uprising against the Soviet Occupation during October-November 1956
brought him international celebrity and some of its photographs made covers in
a number of the most prominent newspapers and illustrated magazines all over
the world.
Two years later, in 1958,
he would cover the War in Algeria, getting an iconic picture of
Erich Lessing made this famous photograph with his Leica M3 coupled to a
screwmount four elements in three groups Leitz Elmar 90 mm f/4 with adapter to
M bayonet. The great experience of the Magnum photographer with primes made him
deeply know when to use each lens depending on the distance to the subject,
always doing his best to go unnoticed. He got this image from a balcony
shooting downwards, probably at f/8 (there´s sharpness from his cap and right
hand to his right shoe) and taking advantage of the 0.92x magnification of the
Leica M3 viewfinder enabling an exceedingly accurate focus, though focus is not
100% perfect, a hallmark of this kind of classical black and white Leica
photojournalistic images in which the technical perfection of the picture is
not the most important thing, but the defining instant depicted.
© jmse
General Charles de Gaulle
during his four days visit to the cities of Algiers and Constantina,
photographing the dignitary in the latter while saluting his honor guard, from
a very high point and an almost utterly vertical perspective, wisely enhanced
by the shadows of the French soldiers.
Subsequently, Erich
Lessing (whose unswerving love for photography and black and white films harked
back to his teenage years in mid thirties living in an apartment of
Ludo-Hartmann-Hof in Albertgasse of Vienna, when he was presented with his
first photographic camera in 1936) focused more on social, political,
historical and cultural subjects, keeping on making black and white photography
but adding gorgeous large format color photography to his repertoire, getting
pictures of works of art in museums, historical sites and archaeological
locations.
In addition, Lessing was
an outstanding teacher of photography who imparted a lot of courses and
lectures in Arles, the Salzburg Summer Academy, the Venice Biennale, the
University of Applied Arts in Vienna and others, as well as having been
bestowed a slew of international awards like the Art Directors´ Club Award for
his work during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, the Prix Nadar for his book
The Voyages of Ulysses in 1966, the Austrian Cross of Honor First Class for
Science and Art.
Moreover, he was a member
of UNESCO´s International Commission of Museums (ICOM).
© jmse
Erich Lessing was beyond
doubt one of the foremost photographers in the world during the second golden
era of photojournalism (fifties, sixties and seventies) in which professional
photojournalists like him, Erich Hartmann, Elliott Erwitt, Eve Arnold, Inge
Morath, Ernst Haas, Burt Glinn, Dennis Stock, Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank,
Eugene Smith, Abbas, Ian Berry, Bruno Barbey, Rene Burri, Bruce Davidson,
Thomas Hoepker, Hiroji Kubota, Josef Koudelka, Constantin Manos and others
boosted photography to new heights after the first and pioneering golden era of
photojournalism ( between mid twenties and late forties) embodied by Erich
Salomon, Walter Bosshard, Harald
Lechenperg, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Ilse Bing, Otto Umbehr, David Seymour "
Chim ", Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, Henri Carier-Bresson, Tim Gidal, Paul
Wolff, Georg Rodgers, Agustí Centelles, Kurt Hutton, Izis Bildermanas and
others.
Times of Glory. Annual Magnum Meeting in Paris in 1957. From left to
right : Elliott Erwitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Erich Hartmann, Rosellina
Bischof-Burri, Inge Morath, Kryn Takonis, Ernst Haas, Brian Brake, Michel
Chevalier, Inge Bondi, John G. Morris, Barbara Miller, Cornell Capa, René Burri
and Erich Lessing.
© Magnum Agency
AN OUTSTANDING LEGACY OF
TOP-NOTCH IMAGES
Throughout his long
photographic career of more than half a century, Erich Lessing created a rack
of great pictures, some of them truly iconic like:
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- President Dwight D.
Eisenhower tipping his hat greeting people as a beam of light incides on his
face while walking across Geneva Airport in 1955 with Swiss President Max
Petitpierre. An iconic picture made by Erich Lessing with his Leica M3 coupled
to an Elmar 90 mm f/4 through adapter to M bayonet. This is the shot of a
master, in which the photographer proves his skill and reaction quickness,
focusing on the American President´s face just at the decisive moment making a
difference.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- Professor Lorenz
Boehler, surgeon who introduced the technique of nailing broken bones. Vienna
(1954). Erich Lessing was always fascinated by the breakthrough Austrian
technology in a host of fields. In spite of the dim light, the photographer
manages to shoot with his Leica IIIf rangefinder camera and Leitz Elmar 50 mm
f/3.5 probably at f/8 and at very slow shutter speed to get the picture in
which he has gone unnoticed, to such an extent that neither the doctors (of
whom Professor Lorenz Boehler is the closest to the patient lyning on the bed)
and the two patients inside the room have realized that the picture has been
made, in a clear example of symbiosis between a great photographer and a 24 x
36 mm mirrorless rangefinder camera lacking any swiveling mirror and making
possible to shoot handheld at exceedingly slow speeds up to roughly 1/8 s
without trepidation, with the added benefit of the whispering sound of the
Leica IIIf shutter being decisive to keep discretion.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- Registration in a
Turkish refugee camp. Edirne (Turkey). 1951. A great picture in which Erich
Lessing makes a masterful use of natural light entering from the left of the
image, through a partially seen window, to photograph a group of Turkish
refugees waiting to fill registration forms. The photographer has shot his
screwmount Leica IIIf rangefinder with Leitz Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 at full f/3.5
aperture, focusing on the face of the man with his crossed hands on the table,
who is attentively watching how the official puts the stamp on the form with
his name. At the same time, a second refugee sitting beside him has been
depicted engrossed in his thoughts, while a further official is showing the
forms to one of the other six refugees making a queue for their turn, giving
instructions to him. And the luminic context is enhanced by another window in
the background, through which enters more light inciding on the right face side
of one of the remaining refugees, who appear out of focus (in the same was as
the official sitting on far lower zone of the image) thanks to the selection of
f/3.5 widest aperture by the photographer.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- Newspaper vendor keeping
her feet warm in straw shoes. 1953. As always, Erich Lessing pays attention
even to the smallest details, and shoots his Leica IIIf with Elmar 50 mm f/3.5
probably at f/8 to get good depth of field from the woman occupying the lower
left middle area of the image to the cars and people in the far background. The
photographer conveys a feeling of very cold temperature enhanced by the very
big straw shoes, dark coat and gloves of the newspaper seller, the ground
covered by water and mud and the remnants of snow which can be glimpsed in the
distance. But at the same time, the woman has been captured while reading a
page of a folded newspaper, momentarily alien to everything happening around
her.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- Clemens Krauss
conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the Musikvereins-Concert Hall
in Vienna. 1954. Lessing uses a vertical composition, probably shooting at f/11
and a very slow shutter speed to show the grandiose hall in all of its
splendour, getting sharpness from the two musicians nearest to the camera to
the farthest stands on top left of the image, highlighting the abundant
audience, the statues and the exceedingly beautifil chandeliers. Needless to
say that the whispering shutter of the Leica IIIf (a mechanic wonder fruit of
many decades of steady improvements by Oskar barnack, Ludwig Leitz and Willi
Stein) with Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 used by the photographer to get the picture was
important to preserve discretion to the utmost during the photographic act.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- A Writers´ Union Meeting
on June 27, 1956 regarding press and information policy, which sparked the
revolution. On the left of the image is Emil Horn, later a historian of the
Revolution. Budapest (Hungary). 1956. Four months before his coverage of
Budapest Uprising against the Soviet invading troops, Erich Lessing visited
Hungary and got many pictures of the meetings of Hungarian writers,
philosophers and intellectuals. In this great picture, Erich Lessing
masterfully captures with his Leica M3 and collapsible Summicron-M 50 mm f/2
Version 1 the very special atmosphere of those moments and the collective
concern about a possible invasion of the country by USSR troops. In this
regard, the lost sight of Emil Horn (on the left of the image), the man with
his fist on his head on far right lower area on the picture and the eyes of the
man behind him are very meaningful, in the same way as the countenance of the
young woman whose head can be seen behind Emil Horn´s left shoulder.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- Demonstration of angry
Hungarian civilians in a street of Budapest against the Soviet Invasion.
October of 1956. The picture of a master epitomizing the greatest goal to
attain by any photojournalist : to become invisible while getting the picture.
This is an utterly front shot from a very near distance of around three meters
to the crowd. And incredibly, not even one of the persons shouting visible in
the image are looking at the camera. Erich Lessing, with a perfect timing, has
managed to capture them unaware of his presence, going unnoticed while getting
the picture with his Leica M3 coupled to a collapsible Summicron-M 50 mm f/2
First Version, probably shooting at f/11 to get maximum feasible depth of
field. In addition, a split second before shooting, with his formidable sense
of anticipation, Lessing has realized that the woman on the right wearing a
large handkerchief on her neck is making the victory sign with her right hand
through the space between the left arm and body of the woman in the middle of
the image wearing a black coat with belt.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- A Russian soldier lying
on the ground of a Budapest street after having been killed during the fighting
between Soviet troops and Hungarian armed civilians. October of 1956. Erich
Lessing, a realistic photographer par excellence, chooses a vertical framing
and uses a great depth of field, shooting probably at f/11 to get maximum
sharpness on the whole surface of the image, in whose background can be seen
two destroyed Soviet tanks. During late October and first week of November of
1956, Budapest streets became a battleground in which hundreds of thousands of
Hungarian civilians fought bravely against the Soviet armored divisions, until
been finally crushed.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- A big crowd outside the
former central office of Szabad Nép (communist newspaper) captured by the
Hungarian uprising, trying to get the first number of the new Magyar
Függetlenség (Hungarian Independence). Budapest (Hungary). October of 1956.
This is another well-known iconic picture created by Erich Lessing, who once
more uses a big depth of field probably shooting at f/16 and a slow shutter
speed which have rendered the falling newspapers blurry, masterfully conveying
a motion feeling in synergy with the raising hands struggling to take the
papers, something fostered by the strenuous effort visible in the face of the
man wearing a hat in the middle lower area of the image, who is stretching his
right arm upwards.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
A Hungarian patriot, who
suffered from the amputation of his left leg during the intense fighting in the
streets of Budapest against the Soviet troops, is photographed by Erich Lessing
while taking a rifle and a submachine gun, ready for combat again. The great
depth of field chosen by Lessing, who has probably shot at f/8 makes possible
to spot in the background building the impacts of shells fired by Soviet
tanks.
© Erich Lessing Magnum Agency
A Russian soldier killed
in a street of Budapest is pointed to her daughter by a Hungarian mother. Once
more, Lessing uses a big depth of field to get sharpness from the nearest
foreground to the far background, encompassing the long queue of civilians watching,
the havoc wreaked by artillery fire of the Soviet vehicles visible on the left
of the image, and the buildings in the distance.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
- Canadian pianist Glenn
Gould and Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan during the recording of
Beethoven´s Paino Concerto Number 3 in C minor Op.37 with Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra inside the Hoschschule für Musik in Berlin on May 25, 1957. Lessing
masterfully captures a moment in which the great Austrian conductor is
enthralled with his right hand fingers near his chin while looking at the
genius pianist. The photographer was a great lover of classical music,
particularly the piano one, because his beloved mother Margit Lessing was a
great piano player in Vienna. The composition is perfect, with the photographer
going unnoticed while captures a highly meaningful moment of interaction
between both musicians, enhanced by their reflection on top middle and right
areas of the image. Lessing has photographed a magical moment with his Leica M3
and collapsible Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 First Version, having also drawn the
unique personality of the great Canadian pianist, who appears on the brink of
exhaustion and showing lack of sleep after rehearsing an average of roughly 10
hours per day.
© Erich Lessing / Magnum Agency
Another master shot made
by Erich Lessing, who manages to photograph the aftermath of the Hungarian
Uprising after being crushed by a massive attack of Soviet tanks : a very young
Hungarian boy plods across a Budapest street while holding with great effort a
huge wooden beam with his hands. It is an impressive image in spite of being
utterly in front of the boy and at a very near distance, has managed to go
unnoticed and captured him completely unaware of his presence.
Once and again, Lessing
proves his unutterable gift to get exceedingly meaningful pictures with tons of
depth of field, like this one in which he has used his Leica M3 coupled to a
collapsible Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 First Version, probably shooting at f/8 and a
slow shutter speed, to such an extent that almost the whole image area appears
sharp and even the building in far background can be glimpsed, while the right
foot of the boy appears tremulous, conveying motion feeling.
The exceedingly short
Leica M3 shutter lag of 12 ms (far better in this regard than the best current
professional digital cameras has also been helpful to get this iconic picture,
in which as always, the experience and eye of the photographer have been the
key factors.
The boy´s countenance,
clearly reveals that he is freezing cold because of the very low temperature of
around -10º C (26 F) and suffering very much to be able to transport the heavy beam.
In addition, the mist on top right area of the picture fosters even more the
desolation pervading the instant. As a matter of fact, there was hunger in
Budapest after the defeat, shortage of bread and long queues of thousands of
people waiting for pretzel during more than a year.
© jmse
Erich Lessing holding the
gorgeous book " Magnum First " (including photographs made by Werner
Bischof, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Inge Morath, Ernst Haas, Jean
Marquis, Marc Riboud and Erich Lessing who were shown during a pioneering
exhibition of the reference-class photographic agency in some cities of
Switzerland in 1956) published by Hatje
Cantz, opened in its page 88 and showing the picture he made of two children
playing in Bevedere Gardens of Vienna in 1954.
The remembrance of Erich
Lessing, a great photojournalist who always deemed his way of creating images
as a handcrafted trade with a realistic approach, will be everlasting for all
lovers of photography.
For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right
To comment or to read comments please scroll past the ads below.
All ads present items of interest to Leica owners.
_________________________________________________________________________
For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right
To comment or to read comments please scroll past the ads below.
All ads present items of interest to Leica owners.
_________________________________________________________________________
Buy vintage Leica cameras from
America's premier Leica specialist
http://www.tamarkinauctions.com/ http://www.tamarkin.com/leicagallery/upcoming-show
Buy vintage Leica cameras from
America's premier Leica specialist
http://www.tamarkinauctions.com/ http://www.tamarkin.com/leicagallery/upcoming-show
Click on image to enlarge
Order: info@gmpphoto.com
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography
Click on image to enlarge
Order: info@gmpphoto.com
Click on image to enlarge
Order: info@gmpphoto.com
Click on image to enlarge
Order: info@gmpphoto.com
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography
Click on image to enlarge
Order: info@gmpphoto.com
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography
Click on image to enlarge
Order: info@gmpphoto.com
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography
Karl Dedolph wrote:
ReplyDeleteHeinz, this blog is a great read. Exceptional. Thank you.