Steve McCurry wins Leica award?

Maybe Leica will make him next Leica photographer by giving him this award and camera, and he will make them even more famous in future, why not 🙂
 
dreilly said:
If McCurry thought Leicas were the best, wouldn't he shoot with them?
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Some people aren't brand-centered. While I'm sure there are chefs out there that are sponsored by a certain brand for their knives and pans (or, that they thought a brand was so good it wasn't worth wearing it down to death), it would be really narrow-minded to say that if the chef had used a Ginsu knife and thought they were excellent, then why on earth does he cook most of the days with a Cuisinart set?

Most are getting really blinded by brand names here. Leica, nonetheless, the de-facto intertoobes photo forums (fora?) punching bag.
 
dreilly said:
I guess I rarely ascribe commendable actions to corporations, beyond perhaps making a good product and supporting it. The core mission of the corporation is to sell something (not a bad thing in and of itself)...anything else they do is in one way shape or form done to augment the core mission.

This award is no different. Leica had two choices: choose someone whose photography they respected who didn't use their brand (and then hope that he says nice things about it or actually does use it) or reward someone who has honored the tools that they proudly craft and sell by using them to produce great work over a long career.

To me the first choice strikes me as more self-serving and transparent. The second choice strikes me as more honest and maybe more helpful to the brand. I mean, if you do that, you can actually say: shot with a Leica at the end of the slideshow. It would be a specious argument because we know the mantra that the camera doesn't really matter, but at least we know that they make a solid enough product that a pro can build her career on it.

I'd then commend Leica for wishing to be associated with people who produce amazing photography with the tools that they have so carefully designed, produced and refined since the birth of 35mm photography.
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Leica is a rather unusual corporation, as it is almost wholly owned by Dr. Kaufmann, who is, by any analysis, an enthusiast of, and booster for, Leicas.

In what way is giving an award for good photography to a good photographer 'self serving and transparent', except in the incredibly limited sense that any award by any company to anyone could be denigrated in the same way?

To take your cynical analysis a little further, limiting it to Leica photographers alone would be self serving, transparent and pointless, as it would merely give more ammunition to those who see Leica as irrelevant and old-fashioned, often because they are intellectually unable to distinguish between 'out of the mainstream' and 'irrelevant and old fashioned'.

Of course there's marketing and publicity involved, as Juan points out. But a firm that pays no attention to marketing and publicity would be a strange beast.

Cheers,

R.
 
Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, chairman of the supervisory board of Leica Camera AG, explains why Steve McCurry was chosen as the first awardee of the Leica Hall: the reason is his indefatigable commitment to a kind of reportage photography focussing on the sufferings and inhuman concomitants of acts of war: "More than almost anyone else, Steve McCurry has recorded the terrible consequences of war and persecution and has thus had decisive influence on our perception of world affairs for decades. For his work, he deserves our thanks and recognition.
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
Some people aren't brand-centered. While I'm sure there are chefs out there that are sponsored by a certain brand for their knives and pans (or, that they thought a brand was so good it wasn't worth wearing it down to death), it would be really narrow-minded to say that if the chef had used a Ginsu knife and thought they were excellent, then why on earth does he cook most of the days with a Cuisinart set?

Most are getting really blinded by brand names here. Leica, nonetheless, the de-facto intertoobes photo forums (fora?) punching bag.
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There's a lot of historical accident here too. Many of us, as young photographers, decided we couldn't afford Leicas or (even more likely) that we couldn't afford Leica lenses. We may have had a Leica with a standard lens, but for wide angles in particular, we stuck with Nikon: an enormous choice of good lenses, from Nikon and others, at very modest prices.

When I had the most lenses for my Nikons I had 14, 17, 21, 35, 50, 90, 135, 200, 300, 600, 800, 1200, and I'd had 24 and 28 as well, quite apart from a few zooms. Understandably I used them a lot. But once I'd bought my first good, new wide-angle for my Leicas in about 1980, a 35/1.4, I used Leicas more and more, and added quite a lot more RF coupled lenses. My wife uses them too, so between us we have 15, 21*, 28, 50*, 75, 90*, 135 (asterisk means two or more in that focal length). I'd guess the crossover between using mostly Nikon, with Leica as an ever growing minority, to Leica as a majority, was in the late 80s.

Sure, there are pictures I can't take as easily with my Leicas (so I still use Nikons if I really want them and it's not too inconvenient) but they are very few in number, and most of the time I'll live without those pictures in return for light weight, small size, and superb handling.

McCurry may or may not go down the same route of conversion to Leica, but giving him a Leica must surely be a push in the right direction.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Roger says: "Of course there's marketing and publicity involved, as Juan points out. But a firm that pays no attention to marketing and publicity would be a strange beast. "

I agree 100%. An at the end McCurry photos are "not bad" at all...
I would like to have the same capacity to control light and composition, even in difficult environments...
robert
 
Of course there is marketing and publicity involved. A new award which quickly follows on from a new Leica/Magnum business partnership. Hardly a coincidence! McCurry has a fine body of work created over many decades. He deserves plenty of recognition for that. How some of that work was produced may well be open for discussion. But looking again at his work from Afghanistan, Kuwait and New York 9/11 there is some very powerful photojournalism there.

But there aren't any surprises to me in all of this. It's the way our consumerist society works. It's all about shifting units.

I really don't get hung up on what equipment other's use. Professional photographers don't just use Nikon or Leica or whatever brand anyway. They use the camera they feel is most suited to the job whether it's a digital SLR or a Large format film camera. I know Stuart Franklin, former Magnum president did some recent work on a 8x10 and other work using medium format, for example. Photographers are not necessarily a "slave" to one brand. I'd be very surprised if you could find one Photographer who is contracted to only shoot one brand of camera.

"Amateurs worry about gear. Pros worry about money. Masters worry about light." 😀
 
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Roger

I think the reason why some are baffled is that Leica stated that the award was given for various reasons, specifically citing service to the Leica brand. I don't think anyone (anyone sane anyway) is suggesting it should only be given to a diehard Leica nut. It would have made sense for Leica to have dropped the 'service to leica' part considering it clouds the issue. Had this been omitted I don't think there would have been any debate. it just seems an odd thing to say when giving the first award to someone heavily disassociated from the leica brand. I agree that it is commendable that they look outside their own stable. It would also be bad marketing!
 
Turtle: the original statement, in German, cited contributions to photography or service to the brand.
 
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Lots of weird assumptions in this thread.
That a brand's award should only be given to somene using that brand (rather than making brilliant photos). No award works like that, why do you think they always throw in kit with the award if the winner should already be using a Leica/Hasselblad/Sony?
Also that documentaries are unedited, undirected plain truth. Every documentary you ever saw was an edited, directed and interpreted opinion on the truth, not truth itself. The act of photography is editing, as is any form of documentation or story-telling. It's just that everyone experiences the same situation differently.
 
Jeez, even this topic has become polarized.... hey, I just spent the whole weekend with NO camera and no photography whatsoever. The weather is nice, the family is still around and life is short.

Time to go play outside, boys and girls.:angel:
 
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