a big warm kiss

Leica IIIf
Originally uploaded by selva.

a found poem

Nobody does bourgeois solidity
like the Germans

You can imagine coming here
for coffee and cakes with your aunt
but that would be the limit of excitement

By the time you reach
Oskar-Barnack-Strasse
the town has petered out

Just before the railway line
there is a clutch of buildings
with a red dot on the sign outside

As fanfare
that’s it

But here is the place to go
if you want to find
the most beautiful
mechanical objects
in the world

Found in Candid Camera: The Cult of Leica, by Anthony Lane in the 24 September issue of the New Yorker.

Also in the piece:

Asked how he thought of the Leica, Cartier-Bresson said that it felt like “a big warm kiss, like a shot from a revolver, and like the psychoanalyst’s couch.”