F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi puts Leica in the spotlight

“The most iconic images in history, even the ones that weren’t taken with a Leica, were taken because of the Leica,” is a powerful message.

Between 1913 and 1914 Oskar Barnack was head of development at Ernst Leitz (now Leica). He loved photography but couldn’t carry around heavy equipment because he had asthma. So he designed the first 35mm camera, which was smaller and lighter and didn’t need a whole lot of paraphernalia. In fact, WW1 got in the way of the camera’s being released to the public by Leica. That didn’t happen until 1925, when the head of Leica, Ernst Leitz, took a punt on the new camera and authorised a production run of 1,000.

This year, Leica is celebrating the centenary of the first 35mm camera. Part of its year long program is the opening in November of the new Leica Gallery São Paulo.

And to promote that, agency F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi has created a two minute short film that discusses Leica’s spearhead role in photography’s evolution while it recreates 35 of the most recognisable photos of the last century. So the film is also a history of photography.

The narrator observes that while not every famous photograph was taken with a Leica camera, Leica took “the camera out of the studio and placed it into real life…The most iconic images in history, even the ones that weren’t taken with a Leica, were taken because of the Leica… We didn’t invent photography, but we invented photography.”

F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi’s 2013 commercial for the release of Leica M-Monochrome called Soul, won seventeen awards, five of them at Cannes:

In Craft, the Gold Lion for Cinematography, Silver Lion for Direction, and two Bronze Lions for Editing and Art Direction.
In Film, the Silver Lion in the Retail Stores segment.