The News
of the World
Deserves Witnesses
A radio amateur ready to receive a transmission:
what might the prevailing news headlines or the latest pop song the dog is listening to so intently, have been? In 1925, the legendary inventor of the Ur-Leica, Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), photographed the family dog as a Radio Amateur – as Barnack himself wrote on the back of the picture. In contrast to British painter Francis Barraud’s picture, immortalising his dog Nipper sitting in front of the flared horn of a gramophone, Barnack’s terrier appears quite confident in front of the radio device. Equipped with the headphones that were still necessary at the time, and a small pince-nez in front of his eyes, the clever dog leans curiously onto the receiver, seemingly unaware of being portrayed for eternity by his master.
Small negative – big picture
Oskar Barnack
Right from the start, the ingenious engineer Barnack was producing his own photographs with the cameras he developed. As early as March 1914, he noted in his workbook: “Lilliput camera completed”. This was in reference to the prototype, known today as the Ur-Leica, which was to revolutionise the history of photography. “Small negative – big picture”: with this motto, he came up with the first small format 35mm film camera. Instead of tedious work with bulky plate cameras, the perfect 35mm camera now made spontaneous photography a possibility.
The enterprising engineer had developed a milestone that was to mark the beginning of a whole new chapter for the company. He had been employed by the Leitz factory since 1911; as a photography pioneer, he was wholly focused on the innovation of a new type of photographic camera. And, to this day, his own pictures and photo series continue to be legendary in their own right. For example, his documentation of the flood disaster in Wetzlar, in 1920, is considered to be the first photo reportage produced with a 35mm camera. Numerous surviving albums offer proof that he also captured his children and everyday family life with his increasingly sophisticated cameras. The debate as to whether the 35mm camera should go into serial production and be brought onto the market had come to an end in June 1924, with Ernst Leitz II’s famous words: “My decision is final; we’ll take the risk.” The Radio Amateur picture was also taken with one of those first cameras. Well over a decade ago, the photograph was rediscovered, in an album with many other motifs, found in the estate of Barnack’s granddaughter.
The Radio Amateur reveals not only the author’s sense of humour and his enjoyment in composing an image
but also the diversity of the innovative inventor’s interests. The development of the radio was also gaining traction in the mid-1920s: the official date for the birth of German Rundfunk (broadcasting) is given as October 29, 1923 – the day when the first entertainment programme was broadcast from Vox House in Berlin. The Barnack family participated in radio innovations, early on. Radio and photography were quick to become the most important mass phenomena at the time. Consequently, the Radio Amateur image has great symbolic value – capturing both the major changes at the time, as well as the ingenious foresight of the inventor, Oskar Barnack.
