William Eggleston is a photographer who rose to prominence in the 1970s for his photos of American life, many of which are now iconic. Those decades of pictures have come from dozens of different cameras, and Eggleston himself was kind enough to share with the Wall Street Journal a picture of some of his tools of the trade.
What we see are two rows of Leica cameras — but not the M Series you are used to seeing everywhere. These are all Leica III series cameras, manufactured from 1933-1960. These were smaller and lighter than the M Series rangefinders, and they had an older screw mount instead of a bayonet mount. On the left are a handful of Canon rangefinders from the same period that mimic the Leica design very closely. Clearly, Eggleston preferred small and inconspicuous cameras — which goes hand-in-hand with his shooting style, which is naturalistic and composed of candid, everyday scenes. Here are a couple of his shots:
Eggleston’s photo of his cameras represents only part of his camera collection. Even though he doesn’t usually work digitally, the shot was taken with a Fujifilm X-Pro1. The Wall Street Journal solicited the photo from him for the June issue of WSJ Magazine. Head over to the WSJ’s Photo Journal blog to see some of his best-known photographs. [Wall Street Journal via PetaPixel]
Top picture: William Eggleston/WSJ Magazine