The Leica I, the first camera built to use 35mm film (originally developed as movie film), was produced in 1925. Because of its small size and excellent optics, it was an immediate success. "Small negatives—large images" was the slogan of Oskar Barnack, designer of the camera which was soon to change the world of photography. The small camera quickly developed a new style of photography, where people could be photographed on the streets, without them being aware.
Josef Jindøich Šechtl (1877–1953), proprietor of the important Šechtl & Voseèek portrait and photographic studio in Tabor, was also a passionate photo-journalist and documentary photographer. He bought his first Leica in 1928, and he used it daily until his death in 1953. During this time, he photographed in great detail the events of the period. This was a time of spreading industrialization, especially in the automobile industry; of financial crisis; World War II; and post-World War II, including the communist takeover in 1948. Partly through good fortune, and partly because of the archive’s small physical size, all of these films were preserved in a family sideboard, without any censorship. This exhibition is being held to celebrate the full digitization of the archive, and many of the photographs here are being published for the first time.
http://sechtl-vosecek.ucw.cz/
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