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Photographer Sebastião Salgado to Use Proceeds to Plant Trees in Brazilian Rainforest
Solms, Germany-Photographer Sebastião Salgado has raised the money for 120,000 trees to preserve the Brazilian rainforest with the auction proceeds of one single camera. The all-titanium Leica model fetched $107,500, a new world record for cameras built after 1945. The highest bid at the camera auction of the Viennese photography scene 'Westlicht' was made by a collector from Thailand by phone. The LEICA M7 with the special serial no. 3,000,000 was awarded to Salgado by Leica Camera AG, Solms in honor of his extensive and extremely human photographic work.
Particularly with his large-scale cycles 'Workers' and 'Migration', Salgado made important contributions to the discussion of topics that affect the whole of mankind. As a documentary photographer of human fates in times of poverty, suppression and war, for example, the Brazilian has captured not only fear and sorrow but also moments full of hope, pride, incredible energy and enormous will to survive. Sebastião Salgado has already won the prestigious Leica Oskar Barnack Award twice for his photographic work.
The Leica Gallery in Vienna, Austria is staging a tie-in photo exhibition of children's portraits from Sebastião Salgado's 'Migration’ project until February 5th, 2006. Details of the auction and the photo exhibition can be found on the Internet at www.westlicht.com.
The distinction of famous photographers, scientists and statesmen has a long tradition at Leica. The camera and optics manufacturer have been awarding cameras with special serial numbers at irregular intervals ever since 1925. For example, the 25,000th Leica was given to the Swedish Asia explorer Sven Hedin in 1929, the 750,000th Leica to the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1955, the 800,000th to the first German Bundeskanzler Dr. Konrad Adenauer in 1956, and the 2,500,000th to Czech president Václav Havel in 2000.
The LEICA M7 with the serial no. 3,000,000 comes from a special series of the company to mark the 50th anniversary of the Leica rangefinder system in the year 2004. It is made of solid titanium. Limited to a quantity of 50 cameras engraved with the years from 1954 to 2004, the special series has three lenses and was sold for a price of $24,000.
For collectors of particularly exclusive items, Leica is also offering the anniversary set of the titanium LEICA M7 together with just one lens - the high-speed universal LEICA SUMMILUX-M f/1.4/50mm ASPH. The titanium cameras in the set also bear the anniversary engraving and have a special serial no. from 3,000,050 to 3,000,550. The exclusive set combines the tradition of a proven photographic tool - the Leica M camera - with the modernity of the high-tech material titanium and state-of-the-art lens design. The homogeneous silver-gray titanium finish gives the camera and lens an unmistakably exclusive look, making the anniversary edition an elegant collectors' item. The titanium-plated anniversary set is available at authorized Leica dealers for $12,000.
