Since the beginning of his career, Saul Leiter, with his eye for detail, has made the street his visual paradise, striking a balance between abstraction and profound humanism. This poetic vision of the world and the frenzy of his city, New York, can be seen in the recent Saul Leiter: Early Black & White (Steidl) and the current exhibition at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, featuring over forty black-and-white photographs from the 1940s and ‘50s, including many that have never before been published.
Renowned for his prolific color photographs, the American photographer, who died last year at 89, spent six decades in search of the simple beauties of existence, without any real desire for fame or recognition. His color work has eclipsed his black-and-white photographs, striving after shadows and light like no other, capturing a quiet, dreamlike New York. There’s a little girl in a scarf crossing the street, the golden glints of a little boy’s locks, the blurry outline of a white coat on a subway platform, a couple kissing in the shadows, the half-lit face of a pretty woman, and another in a sunny stairwell, the faces of children in windows and those hidden by extraordinary masks and chance encounters. It is a magical feat of observation that, in the black-and-white texture, reflects an unusually soft New York.
Because Leiter was also a painter, he always loved impressionism, which is seen in his photographs through the suggestion of objects like hats and umbrellas, the illusions of the glass windows and mirrors, anything that draws our attention to something beyond the surface, a veiled reality of life. Leiter seemed more able to express this fascination for the “hidden” in black-and-white, with his human subjects seemings more mysterious, including himself, in a series of self-portraits unveiled today.
An equally mysterious archivist, Leiter left behind him a number of photographs unknown to the public and the artworld. Since his death, his assistants have been hunkered down in his East Village apartment, meticulously sorting through everything he left behind: photographs, negatives and paintings. A year after his death, Leiter’s legacy is looking good. And for someone who struggled for most of his life, that’s not a bad thing.
EXHIBITION
Saul Leiter
Until October 25 2014
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406
New York, USA
