Saul Leiter
Encyclopedia
Saul Leiter is 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.
. His father was a well known Talmud
scholar and Saul studied to become a Rabbi
. At age 23, however, he left theology school and moved to New York City
to become an artist. He had developed an early interest in painting and was fortunate to meet the Abstract Expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart
. Pousette-Dart and W. Eugene Smith
encouraged Saul to pursue photography and he was soon experimenting with a 35 mm Leica. 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 during the 1940s and 1950s.
included Leiter’s black and white photographs in the exhibition Always the Young Stranger at the Museum of Modern Art
in 1953. In the late 1950s the art director Henry Wolf
published Leiter’s color fashion work in Esquire
and later in Harper’s Bazaar. Leiter continued to work as a fashion photographer for the next 20 years and was published in Show, Elle
, British Vogue
, Queen, and Nova.
Leiter has made an enormous and unique contribution to photography. His abstracted forms and radically innovative compositions have a painterly quality that stands out among the work of his New York School contemporaries. Perhaps this is because Leiter has continued through the years to work as both a photographer and painter. His painterly sensibility reaches its fruition in his painted photographs of nudes on which he has actually applied layers of gouache
and watercolor.
Martin Harrison, editor and author of "Saul Leiter Early Color", 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."
Saul Leiter’s work is featured prominently in Jane Livingston’s "The New York School" and in Martin Harrison’s "Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945". His work is in the collections many prestigious public and private collections. In 2008, The Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson
in Paris mounted Leiter’s first museum exhibition in Europe with an accompanying catalog. Mr Leiter is represented in New York by the Howard Greenberg Gallery
Biography
Saul Leiter was born in Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
. His father was a well known Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
scholar and Saul studied to become a Rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
. At age 23, however, he left theology school and moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to become an artist. He had developed an early interest in painting and was fortunate to meet the Abstract Expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart
Richard Pousette-Dart
Richard Pousette-Dart was an American Abstract Expressionist painter.-Biography:He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota and grew up in Valhalla, New York. Although Richard never attended art school, his father, Nathaniel J. Pousette-Dart, was a painter and writer on art. He moved to Manhattan in 1937...
. Pousette-Dart and W. Eugene Smith
W. Eugene Smith
William Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs.- Life and work :...
encouraged Saul to pursue photography and he was soon experimenting with a 35 mm Leica. He began associating with other contemporary photographers such as Robert Frank
Robert Frank
Robert Frank , born in Zürich, Switzerland, is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photobook titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American...
and Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
and helped form what Jane Livingston has termed The New York School of photographers during the 1940s and 1950s.
Artistic contribution
Leiter’s earliest black and white photographs show an extraordinary affinity for the medium, and by 1948 he began to experiment in color. Edward SteichenEdward Steichen
Edward J. Steichen was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Steichen also contributed the logo design and a custom typeface...
included Leiter’s black and white photographs in the exhibition Always the Young Stranger at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in 1953. In the late 1950s the art director Henry Wolf
Henry Wolf
Henry Wolf was an Austrian-born American graphic designer, photographer and art director best known for his art direction of Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, and Show magazines in the 1950s and '60s.- Life and work :...
published Leiter’s color fashion work in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
and later in Harper’s Bazaar. Leiter continued to work as a fashion photographer for the next 20 years and was published in Show, Elle
Elle (magazine)
Elle is a worldwide magazine of French origin that focuses on women's fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. Elle is also the world's largest fashion magazine. It was founded by Pierre Lazareff and his wife Hélène Gordon in 1945. The title, in French, means "she".-History:Elle was founded in...
, British Vogue
Vogue (British magazine)
The British edition of Vogue is a fashion magazine that has been published since 1916.When British Vogue was launched, it was the first overseas edition of an existing fashion magazine. Under the magazine's first editor, Elspeth Champcommunal, the magazine was essentially the same as the American...
, Queen, and Nova.
Leiter has made an enormous and unique contribution to photography. His abstracted forms and radically innovative compositions have a painterly quality that stands out among the work of his New York School contemporaries. Perhaps this is because Leiter has continued through the years to work as both a photographer and painter. His painterly sensibility reaches its fruition in his painted photographs of nudes on which he has actually applied layers of gouache
Gouache
Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...
and watercolor.
Martin Harrison, editor and author of "Saul Leiter Early Color", 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."
Saul Leiter’s work is featured prominently in Jane Livingston’s "The New York School" and in Martin Harrison’s "Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945". His work is in the collections many prestigious public and private collections. In 2008, The Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
in Paris mounted Leiter’s first museum exhibition in Europe with an accompanying catalog. Mr Leiter is represented in New York by the Howard Greenberg Gallery
Selected solo exhibitions
| 2011 | Saul Leiter, Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp |
| 2011 | Saul Leiter: New York Reflections, Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam |
| 2010 | Saul Leiter, Mois de la Foto, Paris |
| 2008 | Saul Leiter, Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris |
| Saul Leiter, Galleria C arla Sozzani, Milan | |
| Saul Leiter, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta | |
| Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York | |
| Saul Leiter, Faggionato Fine Arts, London | |
| Saul Leiter, Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris | |
| 2007 | Saul Leiter, Early Color, University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor |
| 2006 | In Living Color, Photographs by Saul Leiter, Milwaukee Art Museum |
| Saul Leiter, Color, Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp | |
| The Fashion Photographs of Saul Leiter, Festival of Fashion Photography, Hyères, France | |
| 2005 | Saul Leiter, Early Color. Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York |
| 2004 | Saul Leiter, In Color. Staton Greenberg Gallery, Santa Barbara |
| 1997 | Saul Leiter, In Color. Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York |
| Saul Leiter, In Color. Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago | |
| 1994 | Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York |
| 1993 | Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York |
| 1985 | Gallery Lafayette, New York |
| 1984 | Gallery Lafayette, New York |
| 1972 | Midtown Y, New York |
| 1954 | Emerging Talent. Curated by Clement Greenberg. Samuel Koontz Gallery, New York |
| 1950s | Tanager Gallery, New York |
| 1947 | Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH |
| 1945 | The Outlines Gallery, Pittsburgh |
| 1944 | Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland |
Selected Group Exhibitions
| 2007 | Pieces of a City. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York | |
| Mapping the City. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam | ||
| When Color Was New, Art Institute of Chicago | ||
| 2006 | Color Photography, Amon Carter Museum, Texas | |
| The Streets of New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. | ||
| 2002 | New York: Capital of Photography. The Jewish Museum, New York | |
| New York Scene: Ted Croner, Sid Grossman, Saul Leiter and Leon Levinstein. Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. | ||
| Visions from America: Photographs from the Whitney Museum of American Art 1940-2001. | ||
| The Whitney Museum of American Art, June 27-September 22. | ||
| 1998 | Look at Me, Fashion and Photography in Britain 1960 to the Present British Council European Touring Exhibition. | |
| 1996 | Delirium. Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York | |
| 1995 | By Night. Cartier Foundation, Paris | |
| 1994 | The New York School. Dean Jensen Gallery, Milwaukee | |
| 1991 | Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945. Victoria and Albert Museum, London | |
| 1980 | Fashion Photographers. Hastings/Rinhart Galleries, New York | |
| 1958 | Photographs from the Museum Collection. Museum of Modern Art, New York | |
| 1953 | Contemporary Photography. Tokyo Museum, Tokyo | |
| Always the Young Stranger. Museum of Modern Art, New York | ||
| 1947 | Abstract and Surrealist Art. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago |
Selected bibliography
- Alleti, Vince. "Shadows and Fog," The Village Voice. February 9, 1993, p. 79.
- Best, Isabel. "Saul Man," British Journal of Photography. August 2006, pp. 13–15.
- Coleman, A.D. "Letter From: New York, No.41," PhotoMetro. April, 1993, p. 28.
- Coleman, A.D. "Focusing on a Lesser-Known Cohort of Avedon and Arbus," The New York Observer. February 8, 1993.
- Cowley, Rob. "Saul Leiter’s World," Infinity. September 1961, pp. 13–15.
- Gottlieb, Jane. "In Living Color, The unassuming Saul Leiter finally and reluctantly, steps into the limelight," Photo District News, January 2007, pp. 37–39.
- Harrison, Martin. Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945. London: Rizzoli, 1991.
- Harrison, Martin. "Saul Leiter Rediscovered," The Correspondent Magazine. November 12, 1989, pp. 14–20.
- Hostetler, Lisa. "In Living Color: Photographs by Saul Leiter," 2006, Milwaukee Art Museum. Exhibition Gallery Guide.
- Koetzle, Michael. "Saul Leiter: Color has its own Qualities," Leica World. January, 2000.
- Kozloff, Max. "Saul Leiter’s Elegance," Matador. Volume J. Spring 2007.
- Livingston, Jane. The New York School: Photographs 1936-1963. New York: Stuart, Tabori and Chang, 1992.
- Loke, Margarett. "Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery," Artnews. September, 1993, p. 174.
- Maine, Stephen. "Color Pioneer," Art in America. April, 2006, pp. 78–79
- Meyers, William. "When the World Stopped Being Black & White," The New York Sun. December 22, 2005.
- Roberts, Pamela. "A Century of Colour Photography: From the Autochrome to the Digital Age," Andre Deutsch, London, 2007.
- Smith, Roberta. "Saul Leiter: Early Color," The New York Times. December 30, 2005. Weekend Arts.
- Tallmer, Jerry. "Still Time to Develop," The New York Post. January 29, 1993
- Woodward, Richard B. "Ten Undervalued Masters of Photography," Art&Auction. February 2006.
Monographs
- Harrison, Martin. Saul Leiter, Early Color, Steidl Publishers, Göttingen, Germany, 2006
- Delpire, Robert. Saul Leiter, Photo Poche, Paris, 2007
- Harrison, Martin. Saul Leiter, Early Black and White, Steidl Publishers, Göttingen, Germany, 2008
- Sire, Agnès. Saul Leiter, Steidl Publishers, Göttingen, Germany 2008
Selected Public Collections
- The Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover
- The AlbertinaAlbertina, ViennaThe Albertina is a museum in the Innere Stadt of Vienna, Austria. It houses one of the largest and most important print rooms in the world with approximately 65,000 drawings and approximately 1 million old master prints, as well as more modern graphic works, photographs and architectural drawings...
Museum, Vienna - The Amon Carter MuseumAmon Carter MuseumThe Amon Carter Museum of American Art is located in Fort Worth, Texas. It was established by Amon G. Carter to house his collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. Carter’s will provided a museum in Fort Worth devoted to American art.When the museum opened...
, Fort Worth - The Art Institute of ChicagoArt Institute of ChicagoThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
- The Baltimore Museum of ArtBaltimore Museum of ArtThe Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
, Baltimore - The Milwaukee Art MuseumMilwaukee Art MuseumThe Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions...
- The Museum of Fine Arts, BostonMuseum of Fine Arts, BostonThe Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
- The Museum of Fine Arts, HoustonThe Museum of Fine Arts, HoustonThe Museum of Fine Arts, Houston , located in Houston, is one of the largest museums in the United States. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 6,000 years of history with more than 62,000 works from six continents....
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis
- The Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin,
- The Victoria & Albert Museum, London
- The Whitney Museum of American Arts, New York