Lowry Mall, MU Campus
Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
2001
About 24 years ago I had a brief but passionate affair with a Leica. It was a Leica M4-P with a 50mm Canon screw mount lens and an aftermarket hotshoe light meter. The camera itself was manufactured in the early 1980s, and as such was simply a black box with two controls…shutter speed and film speed. The aperture was controlled on the lens body, and because there was no in camera light meter, there was also no battery…a completely analog device. But the lens that came with this camera…it was somewhat older, manufactured at a time when lens coatings, if they happened, were not like the lens coatings of today. It was a lens that taught me that perhaps, sharpness of focus can be an option, and not a priority. Because much of my work at the time was night photography, and because the Leica M series is a remarkably stable platform for creating images with a long shutter speed, I began to try out handheld night photography. This photograph takes us back to Lowry Mall, on the MU campus, in 2001. The softness of the glow from the lights on the mall was a product of both the atmosphere on this particular night, but also a product of the 40-year-old lens I was using to take the photo. The image also demonstrates an overall softness of focus…the sharpness is acceptable, impressionistic, atmospheric…this is a combination of elements ranging from the vintage lens, film capture rather than digital capture, and the meteorological conditions of that winter evening. This view of Lowry Mall, much like some of my views of Ninth Street, was one I returned to several times to photograph this scene during different months of the year, and in different types of weather. This might be the only image I made of Lowry Mall using the Leica and its transformative and evocative Canon lens…a lens that had a past only hinted at by its age, its patina of use, and its marvelous optical qualities.