The Story of Oskar Barnack, Inventor of the Original Leica
In the annals of photography, few people have made the kind of impact that Oskar Barnack can claim. While working for Leitz, then a microscope manufacturer, the master entineer and photography enthusiast invented the original Ur-Leica: a camera that would change the world.
But Barnack didn’t just invent a camera. His creation gave birth to a new era of photography. Finally, people could photograph what they were seeing as it happened and in very high quality; the youth of the early 1900s embraced this invention with open arms and spawned a brand new style of photography in the process.
If you consider yourself a photography buff, but have somehow never heard the name Oskar Barnack, don’t waste any time: watch this short 8-minute documentary right now. Make no mistake, Barnack’s personal piece of photographic history is every bit as important as Louis Daguerre’s or George Eastman’s.
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Image credits: Leica I photo by Kameraprojekt Graz 2015 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.