Spontaneous Relationships & the M Monochrom
My Leica love affair is not an amazing story, but could be seen as a very late mid-life crisis. I came to Leica M ownership late in my career with the purchase of a Leica M Monochrom in November of 2012.
I have been a photographer since the mid-1970’s, although not a very good one in the beginning. I bought my first 35mm SLR in Okinawa while stationed there as a Marine. I got involved with the base camera club when a friend of mine said, “you should print your own.” The first time I saw the image come up in the glow of the darkroom safe light, I was hooked.
Upon leaving the Marines, I went to college and studied photography on the G I Bill in the Chicago suburbs. I got a full time job as a photographer upon graduation in 1986, and have been a full time professional photographer in the Chicago area ever since. In college, I found my real passion in my personal photographic work. I work as a professional photographer to support my family and to also support my personal work. My personal work is for the soul.
Seven or eight years ago I began to notice a change in the way I was seeing. A real turn to black and white photography. My work was becoming more about tone, values and shapes and less about color.
I had shot with an M (an M4 I think) decades earlier and liked it a lot, but found the SLRs and later DSLRs and Hasselblad better suited to my work at the time. A buddy of mine lent me his M9 and 35mm Summilux for a trip I was taking to the Florida Keys. Ten minutes with that camera and that lens and I was rangefinder hooked. So when Leica introduced the Monochrom, I went on the waiting list at several dealers. I ordered a 35mm Summilux FLE at the same time. The 35mm lens came in a month or so, but the Monochrom was still a few months away.
When the Monochrom finally arrived, I found that it was a camera that really fit the way I work and the way I see. I hadn’t liked a camera as much as I did my new Monochrom since buying my Hasselblad 500 C/Ms in the mid-1980s. I had never bonded with my Canon DSLRs, though I needed to use them in my professional work.
I like equipment that is simple. When I am working, I don’t want to be thinking about the camera and navigating in-camera menus. Thinking about the camera or diving into its menus are the last thing I want to do when I’m working and creating. For me, the Leica M is a camera that simply gets out of the way and gives me the room to work.
I have become addicted to street photography. Cartier-Bresson, Frank, Erwitt, Winogrand, Lyon, Davidson and Meyerowitz have all influenced me. Trying to find moments of visual meaning in the chaos of the street is what I find so frustrating and yet so satisfying. It is those rare moments when those elements all seem to come together that keeps pushing me out there.
The Leica Monochrom fits so well with the way I see and work that I have recently sold all of my DSLR equipment and moved exclusively to Leica M, even for my professional work, so as you can see the love affair has grown. I have acquired an M-E and M 262 in addition to the Monochrom. The recently introduced M 262 based M-D will soon be replacing the M-E in my stable. Here’s to my late mid-life crisis.
