Saul Leiter: Early Color

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to photograph for Harper’s Bazaarwhen Henry Wolf becomes art director. Three color prints are included in Photographs from the Museum Collectionat MoMA. Visions From American: Photographs from the Whitney Museum of American Art 1940-2001, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA 1998 Look at Me, Fashion and Photography in Britain 1960 to the Present, British Council 1997 Saul Leiter In Color, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, USA (solo)

Why Saul Leiter Kept His Colorful Street Photography Secret

Early Color at Musée de l’Élysée (Photo Élysée) in Lausanne, Switzerland, with accompanying book Colors published by Idpure Éditions. Exhibition Photographs and Works on Paper at Gallery Fifty One, with accompanying book. By allowing myself to take photos of things I was unfamiliar with, like abstract lines and shapes, I found myself feeling liberated. The camera opened my eyes to things that I would never have noticed before. The curving lines on the roads, the shapes of buildings, and the reflections of mirrors and CDs are all a part of our everyday lives, but we move to fast to notice. By taking the time to look around me for the shapes that make up our streets, I was able to notice new and interesting patterns. It isn’t about just looking at something out there in the world and snapping a straight photo of it. Rather it is about looking at what’s out there in a different way and creating exciting and new perspectives. We don’t have to change what is out there to create new realities and abstract ideas, but instead we can change the way we look at things. It’s about finding beauty and freshness in the things that go unnoticed on our streets. With these techniques in mind, I plan on using my phone as a camera to create abstract photographs of the city I am in by manipulating what is really out there in the real world. For example, by using reflections to create distortions and confusion, I can instill the same techniques Leiter did. This past weekend, I took a trip to Windsor, Canada and on the way there, I began to think like Leiter did. I wanted to use reflections and color not only to play on reality, but also capture the same lonely, isolated scenes he did. It is challenging to find ways that color can create abstract images like Leiter did because in Leiter’s case, he was using expired color film which created images that were distinct from reality. Instead of this expired film component, I tried to incorporate his color techniques by looking for bright, strange colors that almost looked out of place as a way to create abstract ideas. Photography seemed to be an escape for Leiter. Born in Pittsburgh in 1923, his father was a well-known rabbi and Talmudic scholar, and Leiter was encouraged to become a rabbi as well. He left theology school and at 23 moved to New York to pursue painting.The Streets of New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 2005 Saul Leiter: Early Color Work, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, USA (solo) 2004 Saul Leiter: In Color, Staton Greenberg Gallery, Santa Barbara, USA (solo) 2002 New York: Capital of Photography, Jewish Museum, New York, USA I have come to understand the 20 thcentury as a more modern time as I found myself utilizing the same techniques as Leiter and getting similar results. I was able to use reflections like he did to distort realities and play with patterns on the streets to create new shapes. That being said, it is interesting to note the difference in the subjects that I captured compared to Leiter’s. All of the people I captured were either on their cell phones or using technology in another way, like riding a motor scooter. When you look at Leiter’s subjects, they are painting and reading, very in the moment. People today are more immersed in the digital. Leiter created new realities and played on distortions, and today our new reality is the digital and it is in the palm of our hands. After experiencing life through a different lens, I have learned to look more closely at the things around me because there are hidden aspects that can create a new, beautiful perspective. Things that are worth capturing are the things that we create from our own experiences and techniques. This is something I believe Leiter believed and is why he used his camera as a way to create new realities with tools already out there. Lives temporarily in Vienna with mother and siblings, staying with maternal aunt. Family travels to Poland to visit father’s relations before returning to Pittsburgh.

SAUL LEITER: EARLY COLOR – Familiar Trees SAUL LEITER: EARLY COLOR – Familiar Trees

While he worked with a variety of lenses, Leiter was well known for often using a telephoto perspective, and particularly a 150mm lens. This is not a focal length that many street photographers use, but he used it to create a compressed view that made his work feel painterly. His late fame and his life story aside, getting lost in the work seemed to be the crux of his focus and enjoyment in photography. As a viewer, this philosophy has made it just as easy for us to relax with, and get lost in his work. Saul Leiter: Retrospektive exhibition at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany; accompanying book is published by Kehrer. Also attends solo exhibition at Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, and is interviewed on stage. You’ve done a superb job in thinking through Leiter’s photographs to the issues that grab you and inspire you to see the world as he does. I particularly like your reflection about his use of reflections to challenge reality as well as his sense of the city as a place for the individual who is alone. Your decision to take your camera with you to Windsor was excellent and you’ve produced a lot of really fine photographs. In the slide show, I don’t think that the last photo works. I would suggest maybe the photo with the yellow barricade instead, or the closeup of the blue bridge. You have done a fine job with this project. Very impressive.s paintings and personal effects are displayed in the group exhibition A Specific Eye: Seven Collectionsat Demisch Danant, New York. The nudes exhibition Saul Leiter: East 10th Street, with a book by the same name, opens at Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp. Two small shows are mounted in Japan, Saul Leiter: Lanesville, 1958at Leica Gallery Tokyo and Saul Leiter: Nudeat Leica Gallery Kyoto. Saul Leiter says, “everything is a photograph.” This quote rung true for me as I was out taking my own photographs. Everything I looked at on the streets of Winsor, Canada, I thought could become an abstract photograph either because of the shapes, lines, or color. For example, the close-up photos I took of the bridge remind me of Leiter’s abstract photos as the color blue lays against the bright blue sky and the lines all intertwine. It is almost hard to tell what it is at first glance, something I learned Leiter’s photographs do as well. includes twenty of Leiter’s color photographs in his slide talk “Experimental Photography in Color” at MoMA. Henry Wolf, art director at Esquire, publishes Leiter’s fashion photographs.

Early Color - Saul Leiter - Steidl Verlag

One technique that I found particularly interesting is the use of mirrors and reflections to distort reality and instill confusion. He used his camera as a means to start a conversation about what is real and what is not. For example, by playing with the relationship between reality and imagination, Leiter is able to highlight the beautiful things about New York City we don’t see on our own. His use of color film also interacts with these distortions because we don’t know what is real versus what might have changed from the expired film. These mirror and color techniques clearly are central to Leiter’s powerful piece “Early Color.” commercial studio at 156 Fifth Avenue due to financial difficulties but continues doing commercial fashion work, largely for advertising campaigns. circa)Begins working with color slide film, including Kodachrome and Anscochrome. Works primarily with three cameras, Argus C3, Auto Graflex Junior, and early Rolleiflex. receives funding from Mobil Artists in Residence Program to work in North Sea region, photographing an oil platform and coastal communities. Photographer Saul Leiter: A Retrospective, Leiter’s first solo exhibition in Japan, opens at Tokyo’s Bunkamura Museum of Art, with accompanying book, All About Saul Leiter, published by Seigensha. The exhibition travels in Japan for the next two years.talk at Jewish Museum, New York, for New York: Capital of Photographyexhibition, curated by Max Kozloff. Soames Bantry dies on October 9. I like it when one is not certain what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.” When I am listening to Vivaldi or Japanese music or making spaghetti at 3 in the morning and realize that I don’t have the proper sauce for it, fame is of no use.” I really enjoyed reading your concluding assessment of Leiter and his kind of loneliness that also allows for connections. Your reference to Levitt’s understanding of Jewishness as not exclusive works very well for Leiter, especially in the way he seems to invite viewers to participate with him in his exploration of the world of color as seen through the camera’s lens. I agree that the digital has changed a lot and viewing images through our phones in the palms of our hands makes for a different engagement with the world around us.

Saul Leiter Foundation - photographer and painter Saul Leiter Foundation - photographer and painter

and-white photographs are included in Always the Young Strangers, curated by Edward Steichen,at MoMA and in The Exhibition of Contemporary Photography: Japan and Americaat the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Tanager Gallery relocates to East Tenth Street; Leiter rents a studio space behind the gallery. When Color Was New, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA 2006 In Living Color: Photographs by Saul Leiter, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milkwaukee, USA (solo) In 1953, Leiter received a break when Edward Steichen included his work in the show “Always the Young Strangers” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “Some of my friends, I think, were jealous, but I didn’t understand,” Leiter recalled in the documentary. “I have sometimes overlooked the fact that something was actually of some importance.” Two years later, Steichen curated the show “The Family of Man,” which would become one of the most influential photography exhibitions ever, but Leiter turned down his invitation to participate. and-white photographs shown in Leiter’s first exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. Leiter receives funding from Ilford Paper Company to begin printing 35mm color slides as Ilfochromes with Laumont Editions in New York. Leiter's place is now assured. He will forever be known as one of the first photographers to use color in a serious, artistic way. Meticulously printed, his pictures use muted colors...that help tamp down the volume and motion of frenetic city streets. His prism tempers the more anxious, acerbic portrayal of city life offered by his peers Robert Frank and William Klein...Leiter's photographs are as likely to be compared to abstract expressionist painters like Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman or Richard Pousett-Dart.

A search for beauty

I’m sometimes mystified by people who keep diaries. I never thought of my existence as being that important.”