Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter: The anti-celebrity photographer. He turned down the opportunity to be part of Edward Steichen’s seminal 1955 Family of Man show at the Museum of Modern Art, citing the poor quality of his work.

The exhibition of 500 photographs is generally considered Ground Zero for photography’s acceptance as an art form and Leiter’s exclusion had a long-reaching effect. Over the next half century, his work would occasionally be “discovered” by some young academic or curator, but given his mantra was “The less said the better”, it would soon sink into obscurity again, until it almost vanished entirely. Hiding, c. 1936 (© Saul Leiter, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York / Steidl) Over and again Leiter shunned the limelight, craving a privacy that only a vast city like New York could afford. Born in Pittsburgh in 1923, he caused his rabbi father considerable sorrow by quitting the Cleveland seminary where he had been enrolled to study theology to pursue a career in the New York art world. Saul Leiter: Early Black and White Photographs. Books - Steidl Verlag. Saul Leiter in Black and White. Saul Leiter lived in an apartment on a quiet street in New York’s East Village, a neighborhood that evolved, during the six decades he lived there, nearly as much as Leiter himself.

An undervalued photographer for most of his life, Leiter quietly amassed a body of work that has only recently begun receiving the credit it deserves. Since his death, last fall, the apartment has become Leiter’s de facto archive; Margit Erb, his gallery representative, and Anders Goldfarb, his long-time assistant, have spent months organizing the boxes of prints, negatives, portfolios, and books that he left haphazardly piled throughout the space.

The apartment today is far more organized than it was when Leiter died, but evidence of his life is everywhere. A high-backed wooden chair, where he painted and drank coffee, sits in a corner of a large room lit by a wall of windows. Old saucers that he used as palettes are stacked on the window ledge above a quiet courtyard. Director Tomas Leach Discusses “In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons In Life With Saul Leiter” Saul Leiter, el artista humilde que revolucionó la fotografía en color. Antes de esbozar la vida y obra del fotógrafo y pintor Saul Leiter (Pittsburgh, 1923), fallecido el pasado martes a los 89 años, habría que pedir perdón al alma del finado, que dejó dicho lo siguiente: que no entendía el interés por su obra; que no sabía realmente si era un pionero de la fotografía en color, y que esperaba que su desaparición no fuera considerada merecedora de un obituario.

Contraviniendo pues su humildad y su voluntad de pasar desapercibido, es necesario recordar que en los años cuarenta un joven norteamericano de Pensilvania desafió los planes de su padre de formarlo como rabino, se instaló en un apartamento del Lower East Side de Nueva York con la intención de convertirse en pintor (y con la complicidad de su madre) y acabó destrozando las ideas recibidas sobre la plasticidad de la imagen. No por ello le sería infiel a la pintura. Las trece lecciones de vida de Saul Leiter.

De un fotógrafo experimentado espera uno aprender a observar y a robarle al tiempo una imagen memorable.

Pero Saul Leiter, el fotógrafo estadounidense fallecido la semana pasada en Nueva York —la ciudad que él utilizó como lienzo–, nos ha dejado también unas cuantas lecciones de vida. El realizador británico Tomas Leach documentó esas enseñanzas en una película titulada In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter. Junto a esa cinta apenas conocida, un nuevo libro sobre su obra en blanco y negro aspira a mitigar el sentimiento de orfandad y el tardío reconocimiento de un auténtico pionero y maestro de la fotografía. Beauty in the Everyday. Seeing Beauty With Saul Leiter. Home. Photographer Saul Leiter has died [update] American photographer Saul Leiter died on Tuesday 26 November in New York, according to Roger Szmulewicz at Fifty One Fine Art Photography in Antwerp, Belgium.

Leiter, who was 89, had been ill for the past three to four weeks, Szmulewicz tells BJP. “I spoke to him just before Paris Photo and he was getting worse. It all happened quite fast.” Leiter was born in Pittsburgh in 1923 and moved to New York at the age of 23 to pursue a career as a painter. He was encouraged to pick up a camera by his friend, abstract expressionist painter, Richard Pousette-Dart. Photographing for magazines including Esquire, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Leiter also frequently worked in and around his home city of New York.

Leiter was the subject of the documentary In No Great Hurry, directed by Tomas Leach and released by Moxie Pictures. Speaking to BJP on the phone from New York, Leach said he had spent time with Leiter at his home and last saw him yesterday during the day. Saul Leiter. Saul Leiter. Saul leiter. SAUL LEITER: Photographs + Paintings. (left) Window, 1957.

(right) Snow, 1960.