A week of small rituals
Thursday – the silence at the table
It has now been decided that we in the old boys’ gang have lunch at Bellmans every Thursday.
It was Enrico who took the initiative, and it was a good initiative.
This time it went very quiet at the table.
The food was so damn good, and I think we all felt the same.
There is a kind of silence that only arises when people are content, and that was the silence we sat in.
It was Enrico who finally broke it.
He said something, but I don’t think anyone had time to listen.
We were completely busy with our intake of food.
Leica Camera News
Ian Berry Ian Berry (1934–2026) was a British photojournalist from Preston in England and one of the great names of Magnum Photos.
He died this September, 2026.
He began his career in South Africa in the 1950s and worked for, among others, the magazine Drum.
In 1960 he was one of the few photographers present at the Sharpeville massacre, where the police opened fire on demonstrators.
His pictures were later used as evidence that the victims were unarmed and that many had been shot in the back.
They were pictures that influenced history.
Henri Cartier-Bresson invited him to join Magnum in 1962.
After that, for several decades, he photographed events around the world, including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the conflict in Northern Ireland and the famine in Ethiopia.
At the same time, he often returned to everyday life in Britain.
The book The English (1978) became a classic about the English and their peculiarities.
Ian Berry was known for being humble and hardworking.
He believed that photography was never about the equipment, but about seeing and being present.
He was active for over seven decades and said himself that his favourite picture was always the one he would take next week.
Lightbox 6.2026
Lightbox 6.2026 is a selection of pictures that the magazine LFI (Leica Fotografie International) has made from the LFI Gallery.
LFI Gallery is their community, where around 65,000 photographers have posted over a million pictures.
Lightbox appears in every issue and shows a hand-picked selection, and all the pictures are taken with Leica cameras.
Street Magic
At f³ – Freiraum für Fotografie in Berlin, the exhibition Street Magic: Masterpieces of Street Photography from the Leica Archive is currently on show.
It runs from 17 September to 29 November 2026.
The exhibition consists of around 100 pictures from Leica’s own archive, taken between 1934 and 2023.
Among the photographers are big names such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Thomas Hoepker, Steve McCurry, Joel Meyerowitz and Alexander Rodchenko.
There are also Jane Evelyn Atwood, Julia Baier, Jacob Aue Sobol, Fred Mortagne, Matt Stuart and Louis Stettner.
The exhibition tells how street photography emerged.
When Oskar Barnack designed the lightweight 35-millimetre camera, photographers could leave the studio and go out onto the street.
There they could capture everyday life in the city and important historical moments right as they happened.
In this way, street photography became an immediate and authentic testimony to cultural change and the development of society.
The exhibition is curated by Karin Rehn-Kaufmann and Inas Fayed.
📷 LEICA M11 Monochrom · Summilux-M 1:1.4/50 ASPH. · f/2.8 · 1/180s · ISO 1000 · 50mm · 2026-09-19
A week of small rituals
Friday – times to keep
Then came Friday, and with it the coffee break at 10:00.
That has been decided since before, the same time every Friday.
It is good to have times to keep.
A time to keep holds you upright, so that you don’t get sluggish as a pensioner.
The clock becomes a friend and not a master.
So there was a little coffee again, and a mazarin, which is not entirely wrong.
After the coffee break I bought bird food for the week.
The little birds also have their times to keep.
A week of small rituals
Saturday – raincoat and wine
And so today, Saturday.
Damn dreary weather, grey and windy, the kind of weather that makes the canopies at the market square tug at their frames.
But it still became an outdoor coffee break, because some things you don’t let the weather decide.
At the edge of the outdoor seating there was a bit of action.
A woman sat there in a raincoat sipping a little wine, in her own little world.
Then a photographer came along who wanted to photograph her.
She got furious and told him to get lost.
It simply became too much for the girl.
And perhaps that was exactly what the day taught me: a person has the right to their own moment, even in the middle of the rain and even with a glass of wine in hand.
📷 LEICA M11 Monochrom · Summilux-M 1:1.4/50 ASPH. · f/16 · 1/180s · ISO 500 · 50mm · 2026-09-17
Two days of photography
A new app in the pocket
Alongside the lunches and coffee breaks, I have also had a small assignment this week.
I am user testing a new camera app for the phone, Austin Camera B&W.
The task is easy to describe: download the app, use it like any photographer would, and then say what works well, what doesn’t work and what could be better.
It is a kind of UX evaluation, where you test how easy and smooth the app is to use in reality, not just on the drawing board.
So I have walked around town with the phone in my hand and let the app show what it can do.
The cathedral tower against the grey sky, the heavy door in the brick façade and an old stone trough full of rainwater under a drainpipe became some of the pictures.
There is something special about seeing the world in black and white right there in your hand.
The colours disappear, and what remains is the light, the form and what actually matters.
Pictures from today’s adventure
