Saul Leiter - Hardcover

by Brigitte Woischnik (Editor), Ingo Taubhorn (Editor), Saul Leiter (Photographer)

This major retrospective of American artist Saul Leiter, one of the great pioneers of color photography, features a comprehensive look at his work ranging from early photographs, his fashion photography, paintings, sketchbooks and more. Now back in its fourth reprint!

Saul Leiter (b. 1923 in Pittsburgh) has finally taken his rightful place among the great pioneers of color photography. After coming to New York in 1946, he exhibited alongside abstract expressionists like Willem de Kooning before beginning in the late 1940s to take photographs. Like Robert Frank or Helen Levitt, he found his motifs on the streets of New York, but at the same time was visibly interested in abstraction.

Edward Steichen (renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography, he served as Director of the Department of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art from 1947-1961) was one of the first to discover Leiter's photography, showing it in the 1950s in two important exhibitions at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Back then color photography was regarded as "low art," fit only for advertising. Leiter accordingly worked primarily as a fashion photographer, for magazines such as Esquire and Harper's Bazaar.

Nearly forty years would go by before his extraordinary artistic color photography was rediscovered. Perhaps this happened only posthumously, because for a long time the artist saw himself primarily as a painter. This volume is truly comprehensive in its coverage of his career with early black and white and color images, his fashion photography, the overpainted nudes, as well as his paintings and sketchbooks.

Author Biography

Brigitte Woischnik is owner of the agency Foto Factory in Munich, Germany. She has co-curated important photo exhibitions like "Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel" for the Museum Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany.

Ingo Taubhorn is photographer and since 2006 curator at the House of Photography at Museum Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany.

Saul Leiter (born 1923 in Pittsburg, PA) 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 of photographers.

Vince Aletti (born 1945) is an American music journalist and photography critic. He was the art editor of the Village Voice from 1994 to 2005 and the paper's photo critic for twenty years. Today he reviews photography exhibitions for The New Yorker's "Goings on About Town" section.

Adam Harrison Levy is a writer and freelance documentary film producer and director. For the past 15 years, he has worked on a wide range of historical and arts films, primarily for the BBC. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York.