His bold chromaticism, off-center composition, and frequent use of vertical framing attracted attention-the work reminded people of Japanese painting and Abstract Expressionism-and he was included in “Always the Young Strangers,” an exhibition curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953. Leiter was perhaps the most interesting of the fifties color photographers in his use of form. This was the generation of the photographer Saul Leiter, the Pittsburgh-born son of a Talmudic scholar, who photographed the streets of New York City for six decades and died this week at the age of eighty-nine. Alfred Stieglitz and George Seeley soon began experimenting with it, but it was not until the nineteen-fifties that color photography began to come into its own as an artistic medium, in the work of Ernst Haas, Helen Levitt, and others. Included within the portfolio is an introduction by Saul Leiter Foundation’s Directors Michael Parillo and Margit Erb as well as a commemorative essay by Photography Curator Pauline Vermare.The first commercially available color photographic process, Autochrome, was introduced in the United States in 1907. This specially made portfolio is an embodied realisation of an artist’s work and passion that combine the “personal nature” of Saul’s photographs and the “delicate human touch inherent in the collotype process”. With the full support of the Saul Leiter Foundation, the Benrido artisans have printed eight images which were selected by Saul before his passing in November 2013. Now known to have been an admirer of Nabis and Impressionists as well as having been an accomplished painter himself, his otherwise unknown sensitivity and passion for Japanese art has only just begun to emerge.
Known for his creative and distinctive use of framing, depth of field and colour, his photographs abstract the ordinary, transforming people and objects into the colours, shapes and figures that painted a reinterpretation of life in New York City.
A leading pioneer of early colour photography and one of the foremost figures of Post War photography, Saul Leiter’s (1923- 2013) depictions of New York have enthralled viewers since his discovery by the art world in the late 1990s.
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