A note in a workshop log proves that in 1914, Oskar Barnack put the finishing touches on the first working model of a compact camera for 35mm standard cinema film. He had not merely invented a new camera—the Leica (=Leitz/camera), not introduced until 1925 due to the war—he in fact ushered in a paradigm shift in photography.

Just in time to mark a milestone birthday of the legendary compact camera, and for the first time in this thematic breadth, this volume, with about eight hundred images, offers a wide artistic and cultural history of the Leica from the 1920s to the present day.

Essays by international authors examine topics including the technical genesis of the Leica, its influence on photojournalism, and its significance for a wide variety of avant-garde currents in art photography. Heretofore unpublished documents from the archives of the Leica Camera AG round off this multifaceted one-hundred-year cultural chronicle.

Includes photographs by Michael Ackerman, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Ilse Bing, René Burri, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mark Cohen, Bruce Davidson, Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Alberto Garcia Alix, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Ralph Gibson, Bruce Gilden, René Groebli, George Grosz, Ara Güler, Elisabeth Hase, Fred Herzog, Frank Horvat, Thomas Hoepker, Barbara Klemm, William Klein, Robert Lebeck, Saul Leiter, Ulrich Mack, Ramón Masats, Susan Meiselas, Jeff Mermelstein, Joel Meyerowitz, Will McBride, László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Rodtschenko, Paolo Roversi, Erich Salomon, Jeanloup Sieff, Klavdij Sluban, Louis Stettner, Christer Strömholm, Sabine Weiss, Kai Wiedenhöfer, Tom Wood, and many others.