Saul Leiter

Certain photographs have a visual impact. I do not understand nuances around paintings and photos, but some things stand out, or I just find them exceptionally lovely. One of them is Saul Leiter. Don't know how I even came across him. Perhaps in 2013 when he passed away. His photos are memorable. Esp in this age of beautiful, striking photographs that one finds almost everywhere. I guess I try to copy  the style at times through filters.  (I do not think at the moment that there'll be much to put in the scrapbook in terms of photos/ photographers. But this name, to look up once in a while).

Here, a little about him:

1923-2013. American. Following from here.

Leiter moved to New York in 1946, ostensibly to be a painter, and it was his friend, the abstract expressionist Richard Poussette-Dart, who was already experimenting with photography, that encouraged Leiter to pick up a camera. Initially working in black and white, by the early 1950s Leiter was also using colour, well before most other photographers had started to adopt the medium. In later life, however, he would disarmingly say, “I’m supposed to be a pioneer…” not holding much truck with the idea, “I did what I wanted to do. I think from the very beginning, and maybe because I didn’t know any better, I did certain things.”

One of those things was to continue to both paint and take photographs, the two disciplines remaining of equal interest throughout his life. The use of colour within his photographs is often attributed to his enduring interest in painting, but, again, a self-deprecating Leiter had a different take, “I wonder sometimes if I would have been a better painter if I had just been a painter. Would I have explored certain areas of painting? But what’s the point of thinking about it — if you do both, you do both. And sometimes I think you’re lucky if you do both.

“As we see in his ‘Snow’ photograph, Saul Leiter had a knack for finding quiet moments in a bustling city. ‘I believe in the beauty of simple things,’ he would say. One of his most special gifts is coaxing us to slow down and pay attention. 

 Paris, 1959

San Carlo Restaurant 1952

Snow, 1970

And following, some of his paintings

More here.