(Image credit: © Saul Leiter Foundation, Howard Greenberg Gallery) Names like Hokusai, Tawaraya Sōtatsu and Hon’ami Kōetsu, with their use of calligraphy, block statements of colour, and ma – a Japanese spatial concept of negative space, ‘the nothingness where, infact, everything happens’, as the Japanese historian Kōtarō Iizawa terms it. He became immersed in the ornate minimalism of Japanese art, particularly the revolutionary ukiyo-e printmakers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Leiter’s early paintings are awash with colour, in the lineage of expressionists like Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline and impressionists like Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard.

Leiter was fascinated by abstract art, and, at the age of 23, to the horror of his devout family, he dropped out of theology school, got the bus to New York, found a home in the Manhattan’s East Village and enrolled in art school.

Leiter dutifully did so, spending his early twenties immersed in the teachings of the Talmud at a theology school in Cleveland.īut an interest in another kind of deity kept pulling at him. His family expected him to follow his father – to attend theology school and become a Rabbi. Focusing on his work between 19, Early Color captures the quiet, subtle shots that defined his style.Įarly Color is published by Steidl and is available here.Saul Leiter was born in 1923 in Pittsburgh, the son of a renowned Jewish theological scholar. Hugely popular, the book was this year re-printed for its 8th edition, offering the opportunity to add a fine collection of a seminal New York City photographer’s work to your collection.īorn in Pittsburgh, Leiter moved to New York City in 1946 as a painter with ambitions to make it as an artist, however, after discovering photography and realising its artistic potential, the camera took over. In fact, barring a 1953 show at the Museum of Modern Art that exhibited some of his images, Leiter’s first dedicated collection came with the release of Steidl’s book, Saul Leiter: Early Color, in 2006. Considered part of the New York School of Photographers, a disparate group of artist photographers who captured the city in what might be described as real time – blurriness, graininess and all – Saul Leiter was perhaps surprisingly discovered late by the public at large.

Saul leiter color photography