How Another Paul Wolff Leica Photo Exhibition in Japan Reveals Leitz's 1930's Advertising and Marketing Strategy

Jan 16

The cover of the Japanese exhibition catalog, showing a nice contre-jour image which is an image from Dr. Wolff beach book

It is almost a truism that when one thinks one has finished a piece of research and put it to bed with a Viewfinder article, something additional pops up to bite one’s posterior. In this instance, my recent article on Dr. Paul Wolff ’s exhibitions in Japan concluded with a statement that I had not found any other photo shows of his than the ones I documented. Shortly thereafter, I came into possession of yet another 1930’s exhibition catalog, almost accidently. Interestingly however, I think deciphering this document says more about E. Leitz Wetzlar and its marketing strategies than it does about Japan and Dr. Wolff.

The catalog is a 24-page pamphlet, the size of the usual Leitz IB’s and product brochures, which documents an Oct., 1936 exhibition arranged by Schmidt Shōten, the Japanese Leica agency, devoted to the camera work of Dr. Wolff and Anton F. Baumann. Baumann was Leitz’s traveling lecturer prior to Walther Benser’s tenure, and also the photographer of one of the first all-color photo-books, Die Farbige Leica Buch / The Leica Book in Color (1938), Kodachrome having just arrived on the scene in 1935 and being shown in all its glory in this book. While the Schmidt exhibition catalog appears to indicate that all the images from both photographers were in monochrome, there is the striking similarity of at least one image motif of Baumann’s from the exhibition and his later color book.

The cover the rare English-language version of Dr. Wolff's beach book.

Likewise, some of Dr. Wolff ’s images appear to be taken from his two 1936 books: Ski-Kamerad Toni / Toni, ou Ski et Photo / Ski and Camera on the Winter Olympics, and his beach book Sonne über See und Strand / Sun, Sea, Shore. There needs to be mentioned also a Japanese-language Dr. Wolff monograph The Paul Wolff Masterpiece Collection, which, while from 1940, contains both the same and similar images and with a Japanese editor and Japanese-language text, has the appeal of a home-grown product.

The text of the Schmidt catalog does not address the photographers at all – while it has the typical list of images and data, it runs on about Barnack, the development of the Leica camera, and the Leica’s improvements and recent new model (IIIa). It seems a reasonable guess that Dr. Wolff ’s images would bring the public in, and likely also would Baumann’s, especially if the first Leica color book was in the offing. So while the exhibition was a draw in itself, it was also, and perhaps primarily, meant to sell the photographic books from the two photographers, and of course Leica cameras and lenses.

For comparison, there were from 1935 through 1938 four “International Leica” photo exhibitions (two in 1935) at Radio City sponsored by E. Leitz, NY, with images by Dr. Wolff and other Leica photographers. These started off primarily with well known photographers, and were later expanded to include juried images from the public. Winning images from the 1936 3rd International Leica Exhibit ended up published in the spiral-bound 1937 Leica Annual. Pictures from the shows also traveled to other sites for viewing by the public. A well-known 1937 brochure from ELNY: Leica, The Camera of Modern Times, has a list of publications and books for sale which were written or illustrated by some of the better known photographers from these exhibitions, and states their availability: ”from all photographic dealers or direct from E. Leitz, Inc.”

One of Anton Baumann’s images from the Japanese exhibition catalog.

The 1939 ELNY catalog has a similar publication list. Here The Leica Color Book [Baumann’s book] and Snow Canvas [Kruckenhauser] are listed. Each of these books, like in the 1937 brochure above, has been given the typical Leitz catalog number and 5-letter code word. The ones for Kruckenhauser’s book were “79,525” and “KRUCK” – I love this! The photo books were thus cleverly integrated into Leitz’s inventory.

It seems reasonably likely that the Japanese agency was running its own variation on this scheme via the Wolff/ Baumann exhibition; all we lack here for verification of this would be a contemporaneous Schmidt product catalog where their books are listed for sale. But even if such does not exist, the parallels with the E. Leitz, New York arrangement are strongly suggested by the available evidence, and, in all likelihood, this was a basic part of Leitz’s advertising and marketing strategy. Certainly, even in the 1930’s, there were more photographic books about, or connected with the Leica than concerned with any other camera system; the same was probably true up through the 1950’s and may be the case still today. Integrating books, exhibitions, lectures, technical seminars (Leica Schule), Leica Photography and Leica Fotografie, images by well-known photographers in many of the 1930’s Leitz booklets, outreach from Leica agencies, and so on has been a remarkably successful approach for Leicathrough the years.Anton Baumann emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1930’s and was killed in an accident in 1939 while photographing.

Again thanks to my neighbor Yutaka Oiwa for his translation skills

.Jim Lager helpfully shared ELNY material with me about their 1930’s photo shows.