Saul Leiter: The anti-celebrity photographer

He turned down the opportunity to be part of Edward

Steichen’s seminal 1955 Family of Man show at the Museum of

Modern Art, citing the poor quality of his work. The exhibition of 500

photographs is generally considered Ground Zero for photography’s acceptance

as an art form and Leiter’s exclusion had a long-reaching effect. Over the

next half century, his work would occasionally be “discovered” by some young

academic or curator, but given his mantra was “The less said the better”, it

would soon sink into obscurity again, until it almost vanished entirely.

<sub>Hiding, c. 1936 (© Saul Leiter, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New

York / Steidl)</sub>

Over and again Leiter shunned the limelight, craving a privacy that only a

vast city like New York could afford. Born in Pittsburgh in 1923, he caused

his rabbi father considerable sorrow by quitting the Cleveland seminary

where he had been enrolled to study theology to pursue a career in the New

York art world. That same year he fell in with the abstract expressionist

painter Richard

Pousette-Dart, and together the two began experimenting with a

camera, teaching themselves the best means of transposing their

non-figurative credo into F stops and focal length. Soon afterwards Leiter

met the photojournalist W

Eugene Smith, and had his own series published in Life

magazine. It confirmed his decision to pack away his easel and

linseed oil, at least for a while. Later he would merge the two mediums,

adding layers of paint to his already layered photographic images.

<sub>Five and Dime, 1950 (© Saul Leiter, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery,

New York / Steidl)</sub>

The Forties and Fifties were an interesting time for photography. Many now

familiar names were making their way in the world, but all had day jobs.

Journalism was the order of the day. This was the era of Life and Look, of

the Magnum

photo agency, founded in 1947, of the

Photo League, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Alongside Robert Frank,

Leiter had a stint as an illustrator before settling into fashion

photography, where he earned his living until the Eighties.

<sub>Self-portrait with Inez c. 1947 (© Saul Leiter, courtesy Howard Greenberg

Gallery, New York / Steidl)</sub>

In both his commercial work and the art photography he practised in his own

time, Leiter was much better at reticence than candour. Even in his

self-portraits he tended to lose himself in the surroundings or look away:

just one more shadow among many. “I like it when one is not certain what one

sees,” he said, in a rare interview just before he died. “When we do not

know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we

are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start

seeing. I like this confusion.”

SEE THIS:

Saul Leiter’s Early Black and White Photographs

Saul Leiter: Early Black and White’ will be published

by Steidl/Howard Greenberg Gallery at £58, in March 2014

Saul Leiter: The anti-celebrity photographer