Saul Leiter Centennial
by Laura Heyrman
Peering through rain-covered windows, peeking under and through barriers, or capturing mirror-fractured fashion models, photographer Saul Leiter (American, 1923 – 2013) spent decades creating fascinating images. Best known for his pioneering work in color photography, Leiter also worked in black and white, in fashion photography, and created paintings throughout his life. 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth and I Require Art is celebrating the occasion with a selection of his works.
Saul Leiter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and as a child fell in love with painting and photography, but began studying to follow in his rabbi father’s footsteps. Soon, his passion for art led him to abandon his studies and head for New York City. He arrived in 1946 and the city remained his home for the rest of his life. The artist’s first love was painting and he painted every day that he could. Leiter said “Photography is about finding things. Painting is different. It’s about making something.”
I’ve included one of the artist’s small paintings in the slide show below and also one of the painted photographs in which he combined both artforms. Leiter referred to the latter as "painted nudes," as the underlying images for these personal and experimental works were female nudes. According to his friend, former assistant, and fellow photographer Alan Porter, Leiter enjoyed reusing familiar images so that he could experiment with varied paint treatments.
Encouraged by artist and photographer friends that Leiter met after his arrival in New York, the artist focused on developing a career in photography. Like most of his contemporaries, he worked in black and white, but in 1948, he took his first color photograph. He preferred using color film thereafter but took black and white images periodically throughout his long career. In the late 1950s, Leiter first began to publish fashion photos in Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar; in the 1960s, his fashion work appeared in other prominent magazines.
Unquestionably, Saul Leiter’s most memorable images are those taken through windows, looking through snow, rain, or condensation. The distortion of figures and the blurring of colors produce the sensation that we (and the photographer) are warm and dry, while reminding us of our own struggles with inclement weather. Though Leiter has sometimes been grouped with contemporaries as a member of a New York School of Photography, he proclaimed “I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera.”
More work by Saul Leiter can be seen in “Saul Leiter Centennial,” until February 10, 2024, at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and on the gallery’s website, https://www.howardgreenberg.com/exhibitions/saul-leiter-Gbf
The collection of the artist’s friend, former assistant, and fellow photographer Alan Porter can be seen online at https://www.leitercatalog.com/index.html
The Saul Leiter Foundation also shares the artist's work online at https://www.saulleiterfoundation.org/
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