Leica Marks 100 Years with “Motion” Photo Auction

Leica is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a nod to the art that made it legendary. This October, the company’s auction arm, Leitz Photographica Auction, will present “Motion,” a special sale and exhibition featuring 120 iconic photographs that explore how photography captures time, energy, and transformation.

The event comes during a milestone year for the German optics manufacturer. Leica recently reported record-high revenue for fiscal year 2024/2025, driven by its core photo business and growing mobile and lifestyle segments.

For Leica, “Motion” serves as both a tribute to its past and a celebration of a brand still very much in motion.

The Leica I: The invention That Put Motion Into Photography

The “Motion” auction is rooted in Leica’s foundational history. In 1925, the company introduced the Leica I, the world’s first serially produced 35 mm camera, and changed the way photography captured life. 

Compact enough to carry, the Leica I enabled photographers to document spontaneous moments, in contrast to the static, large-format gear then standard. Leica frames its centennial auction as a tribute to that moment when photography became more fluid, mobile, and expressive.

The “Motion” collection will be publicly exhibited at Leica Gallery Vienna from October 17 to 30, 2025, leading up to the live auction on October 30. Admission to the exhibition is free. Bidding will be available in person, online, and by telephone via leitz-auction.com and related platforms.

The selection spans the 20th and 21st centuries. It includes early and modern masters like Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Brassaï, August Sander, Otto Steinert, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ernst Haas, and contemporary voices including Nan Goldin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Paul Cupido, and more. Movement in images, in time, in social and aesthetic change is the thread that is woven through the curation. 

At the heart of the sale is Weston’s “Nude Study (Anita), Mexico 1925,” a vintage print whose creation year mirrors Leica’s own origin. This lot is estimated between €200,000 and €250,000 ($231,000 to $288,000) and has special resonance within Leica’s centennial narrative.

“We are offering a rare vintage print of this iconic nude study – a work distinguished not only by its formal radicalism, but also by its year of creation, which both resonates with the Leica anniversary and signifies the threshold to photographic modernism,” Caroline Guschelbauer, Head of Photographs at Leitz Photographica Auction, said.

Other notable works include Steinert’s Ein-Fuß-Gänger, Paris 1950, Meyerowitz’s Florida, 1978, Adams’s Mount Williamson, from Manzanar, 1944, among many others. The variety of styles underscores how motion can be interpreted in many ways.  

A cultural statement as much as a commercial event

Leica describes the “Motion” auction as a cultural statement that highlights photography as a medium of progress and transformation. In the press release, Leica emphasizes that movement, in or through images, becomes a recurring motif in how the photographs were selected. 

This year’s strong financial results strengthen the backdrop for the auction. Leica’s revenue milestone signals that the brand continues to thrive both as a heritage camera maker and an active participant in contemporary imaging and cultural discourse.

The auction also spotlights Leica’s institutional role in promoting photographic heritage. Through its Leitz Photographica Auction arm, the company has curated and sold cameras, prints, and historic works, helping to elevate photography’s status among collectors, historians, and enthusiasts. This year, by focusing on prints themselves, Leica is turning the spotlight onto the artistry of photography, rather than just the tools used to make images.

“I am very pleased that this carefully curated selection once again reflects the diversity of photographic expression,” Alexander Sedlak, Managing Director of Leitz Photographica Auction, said, “while staying true to our mission of sharing the fascination of photography with enthusiasts, connoisseurs, and collectors.”

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