:::EDIT: DONE! FULL UP. PRINTS ARE SOLD OUT.
I did this late at night thinking it would probably start up this morning but I should have sat by the computer with a cookie and a cup of tea and waited. As of right now there are about 300 entries! to which I can only say Sweet Barking Cheese. Intern Monkey Addie Plumb will be contacting people today. If it goes well, maybe we'll do more than one set. Imagine this little camera could possibly do a whole gallery show full of art. The little Leica that could. Anyway, you all make me happy. Thanks so much. ::: END EDIT
New Art Project - & You Can Be Part Of It
Last week in conversation someone brought up the Leica Digilux -- fabled Leica cameras miserable first attempt at a digital camera in 1998. At a paltry 1.5 megapixels with an uncertain image quality it represented nothing of what Leica was known for.
But still....
It was beautiful in some strange way. The ergonomics made absolutely no sense -- to take a photograph with it you must hold it like a preacher waving a Bible at a congregation of sinners -- but it had lines, it had curves, it had an inexplicable shape that attracted me.
I couldn't get that thing out of my head. I needed a Leica Digilux. Not a Digilux 1, or a Digilux 2, or a Digilux 3 -- those were all far too useful, too much like real cameras -- no, I wanted this thing with a quarter of the resolution of my phone with a shutter lag so profound that you can go out to dinner and a movie in between the time you press the shutter and the time it takes the photo.
So I bought one. It's zinging it's way towards me from Oklahoma right now.
I realized this morning that upon arrival the most likely outcome would be that I would take ten photos with it, marvel at it's ugly/beauty and proudly use it to prop up books on the desk in my office and that would be that. Occasionally I would look tenderly at it and think "what a strange ... thing."
But then I thought -- Why doom this beast to such an ignoble fate? Surely it hasn't been turned on in a decade. Why not give it the glory it has likely never really have? Why not make something beautiful with it?"
And my brain started whirring and here's the plan:
I'm going to do a limited edition package of prints -- limited to twenty ... subscribers? participants? collectors? for $20 a set.
Here's how it works -- 20 people send me a line from your favorite novel, poem, or something from your head, over the next weekend I'll make 20 images, each one based on the line, filtered through my wacky brain, that will, somehow, inexplicably, when the magic arrives, tie together in one glorious visual narrative. At the end, each of the 20 collectors gets an edition of all the prints in a package yet to be determined but guaranteed to be awesome. So basically you get to a) inspire one image and b) get a collection of all of them for the low resolution price of $20 which sounds like an appropriate celebration of a camera that should have been great but never had a rats chance in a cat barn*. I suspect that the prints will be of a quality far inferior to those coming out of my iPhone -- but it's a Leica & that's the art of the thing.
* You can quote me
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