Wabi-Sabi with the Leica M10 by Christian Kracht

Wabi-Sabi with the Leica M10

by Christian Kracht

Hi Steve,

After reading your blog for many years now, it is time to submit my own post.

My name is Christian and I am a dentist from Germany. My current photo project is about Wabi-Sabi and Haiku Wabi-Sabi is an old aesthetic-philosophical concept from Japan. Wabi-Sabi refers to the beauty of imperfect, transient and simple things.

Central features are simplicity, modesty, naturalness and tranquility. In terms of photography Wabi-Sabi means: the photo is reduced, often asymmetrical; the main motive is not in the center; many areas are out of focus; the image has a large amount of white space; the color composition is subtly matt or monochrome.

Haiku is a minimalistic nature poem and I try to translate this into a photo.

All pictures are taken with a Leica M10 and the Summilux-M 50mm, some with an additional intermediate ring.

Best regards,

Christian

30 Comments

  1. You have a wonderful eye. Beautiful work. Such a well executed project. Congratulations! Looking forward to seeing the results of your next body of work!

  2. Thank you Christian for sharing with us of a beautiful photos. I hope that I can see your next project in the near future with a wonderful photos.

  3. Hey, a dentist with a Leica! Sorry, couldn’t resist:) I like your series of pics here, nice theme and implemented well. These would look good printed.

  4. The 50mm Summilux is the Leica lens with give you the spezial rendering you need for your interesting pictures.
    Thank you for sharing.

  5. Great images, great philosophy behind them and great use of that camera. Any lawyers out there?

  6. The Text and philosophy Description clearly helped me to understand and enjoy the pictures. They are simply wonderfull

        • My last comment translated in English, Steve, for you: I wrote “oh no the auto correction kicked in: ‘Gummilux’ instead of ‘Summilux’ “. That’s quite funny in German, because “Gummilux” means in English something like “rubberlux”.

          The German Safari auto correction is a proof that Artificial Intelligence is not yet ready for taking over the planet 😉 Good to know for old school rangefinder lovers…

  7. Beautiful photos. And in some of them, the duplication between what is in focus and what’s in the background is very creative. These prove that sometimes, “less is more”.

  8. Wow these images truly convey the stated principles you describe. Plus they are just damn gorgeous to look at.

  9. These are incredibly beautiful photos. I’m glad to have the concept and practice of wabi sabi presented in such a clear way – photographic haiku ! Thank you.

  10. If you’re half as good a dentist as you are a photographer your patients are really lucky. Congratulations, and thanks for sharing.

  11. I really appreciate this type photography.
    There is such serenity in photographing this way.

    When m43 E-P1 first released, I was able to take such photos for the first time.

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