The Genius of Saul Leiter
“I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege.”
Saul Leiter
I fell in love with Saul Leiter’s work several years ago when I saw a cheap print of his photograph on a wall of a Korean restaurant in midtown NYC. It was raining. I walked in to use the bathroom. New Yorkers know that it’s easier to fly to the moon in Baba Yaga’s mortar than to be allowed to use the restroom at an eatery in Manhattan.
Yet I wanted to try my luck anyway. Miracles do happen.
”The restroom is for paying customers only.”
”Okay. An order of French fries. To go.”
”Sir, this is a Korean fusion restaurant. We’re not in a French fry business.”
That’s when I saw the photograph. A yellow cab in the snow. A woman (or man) with an umbrella approaching it. Shot from the inside, through a snow-covered window. I was mesmerized.
Paying fifty dollars for a two-course lunch is not my idea of fun; yet I forced myself to bite the bullet.
“Table for one, please. Next to that photo.”
Unfortunately, neither my waiter nor the manager knew who the photographer was. But they were accomodating enough to let me take a photo of the photo. Later that day I scoured the internet, wishing Shazam could scan images (it can, I just wasn’t aware of it then; Google Lens hadn’t been born yet.)
So, I “Reddited” the photo and got a tons of responses from photography enthusiasts all over the world.
Photographer: Saul Leiter.
Image: Red Umbrella
Year: 1955
That day I bought the book All Bout Saul Leiter (Thames & Hudson), 2018.
The next day I saw the great documentary about him In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2013)
When the Unseen Saul Leiter (D.A.P.) was released in the US in 2022, I was the first in line (online) to buy a hardcover copy.
And last December I got the best birthday present: Saul Leiter: The Centennial Retrospective (Thames & Hudson) 2023, which contains Leiter’s photographs and paintings.
If photographs were candies, I’d be sitting in an honored seat at the best chocolate factory in the world.
I won’t get into the details of his biography — you can read it all on Wikipedia or anywhere else online. But I think it’s worth noting that as an offspring of a Talmud scholar, Saul Leiter deliberately broke away from the conventional role of safeguarding and passing on religious wisdom. Instead of adhering to the established norms, he made a conscious choice to engage wholeheartedly in the exploration of life's everyday moments, rejecting the traditional trajectory.
To say that Leiter was a luminary in the world of photography who left an indelible mark with his unique approach to capturing the world through his lens is like saying that Einstein was a physicist. Leiter was was so much more than that.
His revolutionary use of color during a time when black & white was the norm was like introducing a vibrant symphony to a world accustomed to monotone melodies, adding a richness that infused life into every frame. His color photography was way ahead of its time and became more widely appreciated in later years.
He was also an accomplished black & white photographer who showcased a remarkable ability to capture the essence of his subjects through the interplay of light and shadow.
In addition to that, Leiter was a painter. His background in painting influenced his photo compositions, contributing to the unique aesthetics — I call it “everyday abstract street photography” — and challenging the traditional expectations of photography as an art form.
Unlike many of his contemporaries who focused on capturing “decisive” moments, Leiter's street photography was characterized by a more contemplative and atmospheric style. He rarely ventured out of his Greenwich Village neighborhood (he lived on East 10th Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenue), preferring to photograph the intimate tapestry of daily life within the familiar streets and corners that had a personal resonance for him.
In No Great Hurry Leiter says something that deeply resonated with me (The New York Times obit in 2013 attributed the quote to an interview Leiter gave for a monograph published in Germany in 2008):
“In order to build a career and be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music and to paint when I feel like it.”
And I thought I was the only lunatic who considered “having a career” to be a notch below “walking into a chainsaw naked”.
Colors. Shadows. Moments frozen in time. Leiter invites us to see the extraodinary in the ordinary, the whole world in a grain of sand.
*** A hat tip to
for alerting me to a Saul Leiter exhibition currently running (until Feb. 10) at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in NYC. I’m planning to see it at least twice before it disappears.This is a good New York Times article about SL: Seeing Beauty with Saul Leiter
And this is a good video on Leiter from Masters of Photography Courses
Thanks for reading, as always! I appreciate your support and engagement.
‘Til next time.
Peace.
ak
Totally agree with you, Susanne.
A wise person (I don't know who) once said that a good story follows a predictable pattern unpredictably. That's how I feel about Leiter's photos. On the one hand we've seen it all before, but on the other, each photograph feels like a drop of morning dew in a desert.
Thanks, Pierre. I saw a couple of times. It makes me want to go out and take photos. :)