Saul Leiter

Voici enfin une rétrospective en français de l'œuvre de Saul Leiter. Ce livre rassemble la plus importante sélection de photographies et de tableaux issus des archives Leiter et offre une plongée aussi poétique que sublime dans l'œuvre du génie de la couleur. Un prix très accessible (35€) pour un « petit beau-livre » de 312 pages généreux en images avec ses 230 reproductions.

All about Saul Leiter

Howard Greenberg Gallery (New York, N.Y.)

Early Color provides the first opportunity to see a comprehensive presentation of images by one of photography's great originals.

Early Color

Martin Harrison

This is a reprint of the immensely successful Early Color (2008), which presented Leiter's remarkable body of colour work to the public for the first time in book form. Although Edward Steichen had exhibited some of Leiter's colour photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953, it remained virtually unknown to the world thereafter. Leiter moved to New York in 1946 to become a painter, yet through his friendship with Richard Pousette-Dart he quickly recognized the creative potential of photography. Leiter continued to paint, exhibiting with Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning, but the camera remained his ever-present means of recording life in the metropolis. None of Leiter's contemporaries, with the partial exception of Helen Levitt, assembled a comparable body of work: subtle, often abstract compositions of lyrical, eloquent colour.

Michael Torosian

The Ballad of Soames Bantry and Other Stories from the Fabled Life and New York Years of Photographer, Painter and Poet Saul Leiter

The classic Photofile series brings together the best work of the world's greatest photographers in an attractive format and at a reasonable price. Handsome and collectible, the books are produced to the highest standards. Each volume contains reproductions printed in superb duotone, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography. Saul Leiter (b. 1923) is one of those photographers who seek neither fame nor commercial success, despite their talent for imagemaking. Born in Pittsburgh, he spent the 1940s and 1950s in New York, in an intensely creative environment where ideas from Europe and America came together and intermingled. There he encountered Rothko and the Abstract Expressionists, and discovered street photography and the work of Cartier-Bresson. His mastery of color is displayed in unconventional cityscapes in which reflections, transparency, complex framing and mirroring effects are married to a very personal printing style, creating a unique urban view.

Photofile Saul Leiter

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Preface by Agnes Sire. Interview by Sam Stourdze.

Saul Leiter (1923-2013) has been hailed as one of the great pioneers of 20th century colour photography. His body of work spans more than 70 years and is in the collections of many important museums. With the landmark publication of his monographEarly Color (2006) his work at last came to the fore. The book was followed by numerous exhibitions, the largest of which was a major retrospective at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg (2012). In 2013, Thomas Leach made In No Great Hurry, a full-feature documentary film about Saul Leiter and his work. But Leiter was more than a great photographer; he was – and always had been – a prolific painter, though this side of his creative life received far less attention. One strand among his paintings is noticeable: the art of painting over prints of nudes that he himself photographed and printed. This publication reproduces over eighty such painted nudes, created over a period of over forty years. This long overdue book sheds light on the vitality and originality of Saul Leiter's art and his mastery of colour.

Saul Leiter

Books

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