Leica Photography Magazine Archive

[dpn]

Hey everyone,

A few weeks ago, I acquired a large pile of Leica Photography magazines. I found them absolutely fascinating to read, and decided that I needed to make them available to anyone curious about early Leitz/Leica history. They're filled with really wonderful information about the early days of 35mm photography, and have some surprisingly relevant articles. For example, there's an early feature on Mary Ellen Mark (Vol. 21, No. 1: Spring 1968) and a fun article on enhancing edge adjacency effects with Rodinal (Vol. 22, No. 1: Spring 1969).

I invested in a book scanner and have spent a lot of time scanning, correcting, OCRing, and indexing 78 old issues of Leica Photography magazine from 1949 through 1971, with some bonus issues of Leica Fotografie and Leica View from the 80s and 90s. There are gaps and missing issues in my collection, but I'm working to obtain and scan some of the missing issues with some contacts in the LHSA and from the Leica forum.

Figuring out a way to make these historic reference materials available to anyone who is interested for free has been interesting. I've been corresponding with folks from the LHSA, who are in the process of preparing their own digitized archive for LHSA members to use for research. I obtained an unofficial blessing and some guidance on their stance regarding copyright of these old historic reference materials, and I'm providing them under the umbrella of fair use for research and reference purposes. I have not yet connected with anyone from Leica Camera, and would appreciate any contacts y'all might have.

These magazines are freely downloadable from my archive site:

https://leicaphotographyarchive.wordpress.com/

I've put up a Paypal donation button, with proceeds going to offset the cost of the book scanner, allow me to purchase and scan missing issues, and address any bandwidth or hosting issues that might come up (the archives themselves live in a publicly-accessible Google Drive folder for now).

Please let me know what you think -- feedback is cheerfully welcomed.

All the best,

Dan

 

[tyrone.s]

Wow! This certainly is a fascinating historical archive that you've commenced putting together and a huge undertaking to digitise and OCR to make word searchable! Clearly you're in for the long haul with that amazing scanner. Thank you for sharing and making this freely available 🙂

 

[uhoh7]

Dan, a great service. Thank you so much. 🙂

 

[Mudman]

Such fun to look through the magazine from 1949 (I live on the vermont border of NY). Thank you for your hard work.

 

[Brian Atherton]

What a wonderful resource! Dan, thank you for making this archive more readily available; I appreciate your hard work.

 

[dpn]

I've finally reached someone at Leica Camera AG. Fingers crossed.

 

[esearing]

while that is a noble undertaking, the images and articles are likely copyrighted. As soon as you accept a donation you are likely in violation of any fair use you could claim. I'd consult a Lawyer familiar with copyright both domestically and internationally. Written permission from Leica may only cover article content and not the images. Getting sued later will be quite costly.

 

[uhoh7]

Sometimes people laugh at me dragging the M9 into the backcountry, and my cries for a smaller M body. Oh that's not what its for....is implied.

Those folks should have a gander at "High Life and Leicas" summer 1950. 🙂

How about a nice little digital IIIf?

 

[megido]

Priceless article on George Carr.
Thank you very much.

 

[harvester]

wonderful !
sterling effort.

AP

 

[Srono]

Thanks for this great effort!!!!

By the way, if you own an IPAD/Android tablet, Leica released the "M magazine" application for free. They sell hard copies as well (~20USD/magazine if i am not wrong) but they digital version is in very high quality too. It is cool that they give it for free and can be downloaded for offline viewing. I bought the first issue of the magazine and stopped buying after seeing the app.

http://m-magazine.photography/ceemes/en/app/


P.s: there is also "S magazine" app for the Leica-S fashion shots.

 

[dpn]

Awesome info Srono -- I just installed the Leica apps and am enjoying them (even if there's no way on God's green earth I'll ever be able to afford modern Leica equipment -- I own only one piece of Leica stuff, a 5cm viewfinder.)

 

[dpn]

I interviewed Junebug Clark, who was featured in a 1961 issue of Leica Photography with his family as an 11-year-old IIIg-using prodigy.

https://leicaphotographyarchive.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/junebug-clark/

 

[ROOOO]

I have mixed feelings about this project. On one hand, it's really cool to have access to these old magazines--and so many of them--that I otherwise wouldn't. However, it seems like a major copyright violation. I don't know what agreements looked like between writers and photographers and the magazine and whether they included online. So, this could be quite complicated--far beyond getting an approval from the publisher.

What you're doing does not fall under fair use as it's commonly understood.

 

[dpn]

Well, after some back and forth, I got a surprisingly gracious takedown request from Leica Camera AG today.

I'm not surprised. I am a touch disappointed that I have to take the site offline, but I'm happy that a lot of people were able to access it while it was live.

I won't soapbox about copyright reform here.

-- Dan

 

[hendriphile]

Saw a number of informative and useful articles here.
Thanks for having made it available.

 

[rfaspen]

I'm disappointed. When its something so out of print and otherwise unavailable, its not like I can support the appropriate authors/photographers/publishers as I normally would. And for the record, I would.

So, thank you for the glimpse into such neat old material.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

Well, after some back and forth, I got a surprisingly gracious takedown request from Leica Camera AG today.

I'm not surprised. I am a touch disappointed that I have to take the site offline, but I'm happy that a lot of people were able to access it while it was live.

-- Dan

Well, that's a crying shame. I had been too busy to access all those, but had it on my list to do this weekend.
No good deal goes unpunished, especially in a world with too many lawyers.
I don't guess there is a chance I could still get the DVD from you? which is what I might have ended up doing anyway.
I do applaud your initiative in undertaking this helpful, and let's face it, needed task, anyway.
Like a friend used to tell me, "the nail that stands up, will be hammered down."

 

[FredR]

Perhaps Leica would host it.

Fred