Leica is to mark 100 years since the release of the first 35mm Leica film camera in 2025 with a number of events in Leica stores across the world.
The celebrations, which include a major event at the Leica HQ in Wetzlar, Germany in June, will be held under the title ‘100 Years of Leica: Witness to a Century’. They will celebrate a century since the first Leica I camera was unveiled at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1925.
“The Leica I is considered the first milestone in the Leica product portfolio and laid the foundation for the continuing success story of Leica Camera AG. To this day, the company proceeds to play a key role in shaping the technological development of photography, investing in groundbreaking technologies and consistently expanding into new business areas,” Leica said in a press release.
“Like no other brand, Leica stands for durable, high-quality products ‘Made in Germany’, an unmistakeable image culture and an extraordinary commitment to the cultural promotion of photography.”
Events will take place in Leica Stores in Dubai, Milan, New York, Shanghai and Tokyo, and Leica Galleries will host “high-calibre exhibitions featuring the work of outstanding photographers”, according to Leica.
The Leica’s inventor, Oskar Barnack, began work on a small photographic camera that could take 35mm cinema film in 1914, called the Ur-Leica. Work on the camera had to be paused because of World War 1, but by the mid-1920s the project was sufficiently advanced to go into production. Ernst Leitz II, who ran the Leitz company Barnack worked for, is said to have decided to put the camera into production with the words: “I hereby decide: we will take the risk.”
“After its presentation at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1925, the Leica I triggered a revolution in photography. As the first compact and lightweight Leica camera with a 24x36mm 35mm format, it made photography a natural part of everyday life,” Leica said.
Millions of 35mm cameras have followed in the wake of the Leica I, and Leica continues to produce film models to this day, including a new version of the Leica M6, brought back into production in 2022 after being discontinued in 2002.
Leica said a number of events will accompany the June event in Wetzlar, aswell as a the release of a cinema film on the history of the Leica camera directed by Rainer Holzemer, aswell as an exhibition at the Ernst Leitz Museum by photographer Sebastiao Salgado.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
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