Saul Leiter (December 3, 1923 – November 26, 2013) was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as theNew York school of photography.[1]: 259
Pousette-Dart andW. Eugene Smith encouraged Leiter to pursue photography and he was soon taking black and white pictures with a 35 mmLeica, which he acquired in exchange for a few Eugene Smith prints. In 1948, he started taking color photographs.[2] He began associating with other contemporary photographers, such asRobert Frank andDiane Arbus, and helped form whatJane Livingston has termed theNew York School of photographers in the 1940s and 1950s.[1]: 259
Beginning in the early 1960s, Leiter worked as a fashion photographer for the next 20 years and was published inShow,Elle, BritishVogue, Queen, andNova. In the late 1950s the art directorHenry Wolf published Leiter's color fashion work inEsquire and later inHarper's Bazaar.
Edward Steichen included Leiter's black and white photographs in the 1953 exhibitionAlways the Young Stranger at theMuseum of Modern Art. Leiter's work is featured prominently in Jane Livingston's bookThe New York School (1992)[1] and inMartin Harrison'sAppearances: Fashion Photography since 1945 (1991). In 2008, TheHenri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris held Leiter's first museum exhibition in Europe with an accompanying catalog.
Martin Harrison, editor and author ofSaul Leiter Early Color (2006), writes, "Leiter's sensibility set his photographs apart from some of the defining characteristics of the putative 'New York School' – as typified by the visceral encounters with the pulse and anxieties of street life familiar from the 1950s imagery of photographers such as Robert Frank and William Klein. Leiter, by contrast, operated on a more reflective, less overtly confrontational mode, seeing out tranquility in the Manhattan maelstrom."[6]
Leiter died on November 26, 2013, aged 89.[7] in New York City.[8]
Göttingen: Steidl; Howard Greenberg Gallery, 2014.ISBN978-3865214133. Two volumes, boxed edition. ByMax Kozloff, edited by Howard Greenberg and Bob Shamis with the assistance of Margit Erb, with an additional essay by Jane Livingston.
Saul Leiter. Göttingen: Steidl, 2008.ISBN9783865216625. Preface by Agnès Sire.
Photographs and Works on Paper. Antwerp: Fifty One Publication, 2011.ISBN9789081772501. Exhibition Catalogue.
All About Saul Leiter. Seigensha, 2017. Catalogue published to accompany an exhibition at the Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2017. Captions in English and Japanese.ISBN978-4861526169
