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 the
New York school of photography.[1]: 259
Pousette-Dart and
W. Eugene Smith encouraged Leiter to pursue photography and he was soon taking black and white pictures with a 35 mm
Leica, 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 as
Robert Frank and
Diane Arbus, and helped form what
Jane Livingston has termed the
New 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 in Show,
Elle, British Vogue, Queen, and Nova. In the late 1950s the art director
Henry Wolf published Leiter’s color fashion work in Esquire and later in Harper’s Bazaar.
Edward Steichen included Leiter’s black and white photographs in the 1953 exhibition Always the Young Stranger at the
Museum of Modern Art. Leiter’s work is featured prominently in Jane Livingston’s book The New York School (1992)[1] and in
Martin Harrison’s Appearances: Fashion Photography since 1945 (1991). In 2008, The
Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris held Leiter's first museum exhibition in Europe with an accompanying catalog.
Martin Harrison, editor and author of Saul Leiter Early Color (2006),[5] writes, "Leiter’s sensibility . . . placed him outside the visceral confrontations with urban anxiety associated with photographers such as Robert Frank or William Klein. Instead, for him the camera provided an alternate way of seeing, of framing events and interpreting reality. He sought out moments of quiet humanity in the Manhattan maelstrom, forging a unique urban pastoral from the most unlikely of circumstances."
Leiter died on 26 November 2013[6] in New York City.[7]
Göttingen: Steidl; Howard Greenberg Gallery, 2014.
ISBN978-3865214133. Two volumes, boxed edition. By
Max 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