He also told funny stories about Robert Frank and his friend Diane Arbus. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.”Īt the exhibition press conference held in Paris, Leiter confided that he often purchased inexpensive color film that was past its expiration date: he loved to be surprised by the odd shifts in color that would result.

That is how I think I learnt to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. “I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. At the same time, I took my own photographs. I collaborated with Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines. One cannot say that I was successful but there was enough work to keep me busy. “I started out as a fashion photographer. In an interview for the new book, he said:

He is humble and unassuming and intensely curious about things around him. Leiter, who is 84 and still quite active, came to Paris for the opening of his show. A book just published by Steidl coincides with this retrospective, and includes more than 100 black-and-white and color photographs. The color work is especially thrilling to see because not much of it had been seen before-and it is all wonderful and quirky and surprisingly fresh. The exhibition included one floor of black-and-white images, and another floor of all color. The first European retrospective of Saul Leiter’s street photography took place at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. His sense of color and densely compressed urban life represents a truly unique vision of those times. It was only in the 1990s that he began to look back at that remarkable color work and start to make prints. He printed some of his black-and-white street photos, but kept most of his color slides tucked away in boxes. All the while, Leiter continued to stroll the streets wherever he was (mostly New York and Paris), making photographs for his own pleasure. He became better-known as a successful fashion photographer in the 1950s and 60s.

MoMA’s 1957 conference “Experimental Photography in Color” featured 20 color photographs by Leiter.Īfter that, however, Leiter’s personal color photography was, for the most part, not shared with the public. He had no formal training in photography, but the genius of his early work was quickly acknowledged by Edward Steichen, who included Leiter in two important MoMA shows in the 1950s. Saul Leiter started shooting color and black-and-white street photography in New York in the 1940s.

Saul Leiter by Saul Leiter