Most photographers would agree: A camera does not make the photographer. The general idea being that the photographer, as an artist, uses their equipment to create the body of work; their equipment doesn't use them. This holds true with perhaps the exception of one camera, the Leica M. If ever their was a "soul in the machine" we might find resonance of it embodied within the brass frame and ground glass of the Leica M rangefinder. Perhaps no other camera has captured the power of life and death, of good and evil, of love and heartache, of humanity's greatest and most horrific moments more so than the Leica M -- the camera that created 35mm photography.
The great chief Geronimo believed, as did many native Americans, that a photograph stole the soul from it's subject. If this is true than the collected spirits that passed through the hand ground lenses of Henri Catier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Nick Ut, Sebastião Salgado, Steve McCurry, Jean Gaumy, and countless others may explain why when I hold my Leica to my eye I feel hopeful, energized, -- full of life, that I have the power to make a moment last forever.
The power of the M.
