*** SOLD ***
This is a very low serialnumbered original Leica MP 16 in CHROME (!!) which belonged to the famous Italian photographer Tazio Secchiaroli who got famous by his pictures he shot at the movie “La Dolce Vita” in Rome from the famous movie director Frederico Fellini.
As whilst Fellini was directing his movies,Secchiaroli was always around the stage taking pictures and often was falling and taking pics of Fellini himself, one day Fellini told him that "you are like Paparazzo". Paparazzo was one of his classmates at school and Fellini said that he was always around him,the same as Secchiaroli whilst he was filming/making the movie.
Then the word Paparazzobecame a synonymous of the photographers of La Dolce Vita in Rome during the 50/60's. So this camera is actually “responsible” for the word as we know it today,the “paparazzi photographers” (the photographers who always are around the famous people shooting their pictures) comes directly out of this camera !! Also important there's a book of his most famous pictures of Fellini signed by him included with the camera,in the book he states that the MP 16 was his favourite camera with which he took many of the pictures published in that book with. Luigi Crescenzi (still a famous Leica Dealer and person in the Leica world) bought this camera years ago directly from him.
It is a very early serialnumbered MP which “needs” to be in BLACK paint. This is also an intresting historical story since Secchiaroli got this camera from an American photographer which was very worn and heavily used. That’s why Secchiaroli decided to get it fixed/refurbished at Leica and got it back from Leica in chrome instead. Reason for this is that Leica had already closed the upgrading department and as they didn't had any spare parts in black left they sent it back to Secchiaroli in chrome. At that time nobody was caring about collectible cameras,it was a camera used by a photographer and simply needed to do “its’ job”. That’s why they also changed the camera into a single stroke one instead of the double stroke it was at the time. Besides that this camera photographed one of the most important period of the Italian post-war life,the famous world wide known "Dolce Vita" in Rome,Via Veneto it is making it simply a museum Leica piece.
To make it even more intresting,also included is the latest edition of the Japanese MP edition from a few years ago with the exact same serialnumber,so also the Leica MP-16 which comes with the black painted Summicron 50mm lens has got the same serialnumber.
The note Secciaroli has given with this cameras “says” that the Fellini's photo in the front page of the book and around a third of the photos into the book were taken with his Leica MP 16.
