Peter Cripps Photography

By

Peter Cripps

·

In Praise of Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter, New York 2008 by Pierre Belhassen, Creative Commons License

“When I look at certain things, I find them attractive or interesting or beautiful, and I take pictures. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re not so good…”

Saul Leiter

When the American photographer and painter Saul Leiter died aged 89 in 2013 he left behind two East Village apartments filled with paintings and photographs from his long and productive life. Like Vivian Maier, Leiter captured Manhattan’s streets, remaining close to home and rarely straying more than a few blocks’ radius of his East 10th Street apartment.

As Sean O’Hagan says in this Observer review of an upcoming exhibition of his work, Leiter’s New York is a serene world of light and colour, using reflections and blur to create a dreamlike atmosphere. In all seasons, his subjects are depicted amid the city’s bustle, yet in quiet moments of reverie.

As well as the street photography, portraits, and fashion work discovered in his apartments were several thousand unpublished and unseen nude images. Leiter’s nudes, most of which were taken between the late 1940s and early 1980s, were intimate pictures where the women are collaborators, sharing moments of their lives. In her introduction to the book Saul Leiter: In My Room, Carol Naggar says of Leiter’s images: “these are not traditional nudes but rather portraits of women who happen to be nude”.

Leiter seems to be experiencing something of a renaissance just now. A new book of his work, Forever Saul Leiter has recently been published and an even newer book to celebrate the centenary of his birth called Saul Leiter: The Centennial Retrospective is now available.

There is also to be a UK retrospective of his work called Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World is at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, 17 February-2 June 2024. This is the first time Leiters work has been exhibited in the UK since 2016.

For a brief introduction to his work this YouTube video by T. Hopper is a good place to start:

You can also find out more about Leiter in this video in the Masters of Photography series:

Tags:

,

Responses to “In Praise of Saul Leiter”

  1. What Makes a Great Street Photograph? – 2. Emotional Impact – Peter Cripps | Photography

    […] live. What better way can there be to really get to know a place than the one you already know. Saul Leiter spent much of his photographic life photographing no more than a few blocks from where he […]

    Reply
  2. What Makes a Great Street Photograph? – 4. Unique Perspective – Peter Cripps | Photography

    […] is one of my favourite photography books of all time. Saul Leiter was an obsessive photographer. He photographed or painted nearly every day for over sixty years. […]

    Reply
  3. Interpreting Famous Photography Quotes with My Images – Peter Cripps | Photography

    […] Saul Leiter (like Fred Herzog) spent much of his time photographing the streets of Manhattan rarely venturing more than a few blocks from his apartment. In some ways he just photographed the mundane and the familiar – the things we all see but often take for granted. Until, that is, we look at the images years later and say, “oh yes, it was like that then wasn’t it, how strange/better/different everything was then”. Just walking out with your camera and just photographing what you see is easy to do but not so easy to get right. Leiter was a master at getting it right. […]

    Reply

Leave a comment