About The Book
Now widely acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest photographers and pioneer of color photography, Saul Leiter (1923–2013) remained relatively unsung until he was rediscovered by curators and critics in his early 80s, and his work has been drastically re-evaluated over the last two decades. Leiter’s images evoked the flow and rhythm of life on the mid-century streets of New York in luminous color at a time when his contemporaries were shooting in black and white. His complex and impressionistic photographs are as much about evoking an atmosphere as nailing the decisive moment.
On his death, he left behind a collection of more than 40,000 colour slides, only a fraction of which had seen the light of day. This book showcases seventy-six newly unearthed images from that extraordinary photographic treasure trove, published here for the first time. Publisher’s Info
-> Further information (German edition): https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/unseen-saul-leiter-978-3-96900-083-0
About The Artist
Saul Leiter was born in Pittsburgh and moved to New York City in 1946. He pioneered a painterly approach to colour photography starting in the late 1940s and produced covers for fashion magazines such as Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar before largely withdrawing from public attention in the 1980s. The publication in 2006 of his first monograph, Early Color, inspired an avid ‘rediscovery’ of Leiter’s work by contemporary audiences.
His studio in New York’s East Village, where he lived from 1952 until his death in 2013, is now the home of the Saul Leiter Foundation. The Foundation has begun a full-scale survey and organization of his more than 80,000 works, with the aim of compiling the ‘complete’ archive.
Video: Saul Leiter in Conversation with Vince Aletti by School of Visual Arts (Youtube)
Margit Erb is the founder and director of the Saul Leiter Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving Leiter’s art and legacy. Michael Parillo is the Associate Director of the Saul Leiter Foundation.
Video: Margit Erb – Director, Saul Leiter Foundation by School of Visual Arts (Youtube)
The book is being released in a number of international editions, in the U.K. (Thames & Hudson), Germany (Kehrer), France (Textuel), Spain (Editorial RM), South Korea (Will Books), and Japan (Seigensha).