Saul Leiter (1923-2013) was an American photographer best known for his pioneering role in the use of color photography. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to an Orthodox Jewish family. Leiter was given his first camera at around 11 years old by his mother. Leiter moved to New York in the 1940s, soaked up the abstract expressionist scene, wanting to become a painter.
Fortunately, alongside the art exhibitions, he also visited a show of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography in 1947. Soon after, he bought a Leica and started taking pictures on the city’s streets. And out of an alchemical relationship between the two disciplines, there came a long and astonishing body of photographic work defined by a kind of elegant, painterly formalism. 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. MoMA’s 1957 conference “Experimental Photography in Color” featured 20 color photographs by Leiter. He became known as a successful fashion photographer in the 1950s and 60s. Meantime he kept walking the streets of New York taking pictures. He printed some of his black-and-white street photos, but kept most of his color slides tucked away in boxes. It was only in the 1990s that he began to look back at that remarkable color work and start to make prints. His style is very poetic but at the same time very urban. His pictures of neon signs shimmering in puddles and billboards reflected in shop fronts often embraces the abstract art.
The first European retrospective of Saul Leiter’s street photography took place at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris January – April 2008.