Leica: witness of a century

In 2025, Leica celebrates the 100th anniversary of the first camera produced, the Leica I, an invention that changed the world of photography, born from the intuition of Oskar Barnack and the entrepreneurial vision of Ernst Leitz II. This important milestone will be celebrated with an international schedule of exhibitions, events and a film premiere to trace the history of Leica.

I have decided: we will take the risk’ with these words Ernst Leitz II chose to produce Oskar Barnack‘s invention in 1925. Barnack, a precision mechanical engineer at Ernst Leitz Werke, had already completed the prototype in 1914, but the First World War delayed further development. Since 1925, Leica I, as the first compact, lightweight camera with a 24×36 mm format on 35 mm film, has revolutionised photography and made it part of everyday life, enabling the birth of street photography, photojournalism and reportage and accompanying generations of people and great masters of the lens, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Steve Mc Curry, Matt Stuart and Joel Meyerowitz.

I live with Leica, it is beside me on my shoulder when I go out and also when I sleep. My everyday life is connected to it. Ever since my first Leica, bought in 1963, I felt transformed into a human being whose eyes could finally focus on the poetry, the drama, the feelings of every day: everything finally made sense‘. J. Meyerowitz

From Dubai to Milan to New York, from Tokyo to Melbourne, from Paris to Shanghai: Leica is taking its centenary celebrations around the world in a rich series of initiatives throughout 2025, involving photographers, creatives, designers and enthusiasts in a journey through Leica’s history and evolution, including major exhibitions and special events.
In April, on the occasion of Milan Design Week, the Leica Store and Leica Galerie will be transformed to give the public an immersive experience of 100 years of evolution in the design of its cameras, through an installation, sketches and prototypes, iconic images and collectors’ pieces.

In June, it will be time for the Italian leg of In Conversation, the project comprising a series of 12 exhibitions hosted in 12 international Leica Galeries that aims to create conversations between visions by comparing a Leica Hall of Fame photographer with a young talent. Milan will host a dialogue between Gianni Berengo Gardin (Santa Margherita Ligure, 1930) and Roselena Ramistella (Gela, 1982). In Wetzlar, Leica Head Quarter.
Leica’s German Head Quarter, Leitz Park in Wetzlar (a short distance from Frankfurt), will also be the focus of this year’s celebrations. In addition to the exhibitions between Street Magic, dedicated to street photography, in the first half of 2025, and the retrospective dedicated to Sebastião Salgado, in the second half of the year, in June, the entire world of photography is invited to a three-day event with workshops, conversations, meetings and auctions of collector’s cameras, culminating in the world premiere of A century of Vision – a Camera Changes Photography, the film by Reiner Holzemer that recounts Leica in the lives of all the photographers who use and have used it.

 

For more information visit: www.leica-camera.com