Saul Leiter (1923 - 2013)

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter was an American photographer and fashion photographer, one of the pioneers of what was later called the New York School of Photographers in the 1940s and 1950s.

Saul Leiter began doing color and black-and-white street photography in New York City in the 1940s. He had no formal training in photography, but the genius of his early work was quickly recognized. His main subjects were street scenes and his small circle of friends. Leiter made a huge and unique contribution to photography during his prolific period in New York in the 1950s. His abstract forms and radically innovative compositions have a painterly quality that stands out among the work of his New York School contemporaries. His sense of color and densely compressed urban life represents a truly unique vision of those times. Leiter is now considered a pioneer of early color photography and is noted as one of the outstanding figures in postwar photography.

For 20 years Leiter also worked as a fashion photographer and was published in leading fashion magazines.