He first began using color film to document street scenes in the 1950s, finding moments of stillness within otherwise busy places.Īrt critics were not kind about color photographs in those days. Leiter initially found work taking portraits - in black-and-white. "And so I started taking pictures," he said, "and I thought, 'well, maybe this could lead to something'." A friendship with artist Richard Pousette-Dart steered him towards photography. "And if you have the courage, you ignore the expectations."Įxpectations successfully ignored, Leiter moved to New York with thoughts of becoming a painter. "We live in a world full of expectations," he said. Leiter decided that becoming a rabbi was not what he wanted from life. "When I was eleven or twelve ," Leiter recalled, "I asked my father why - instead of writing a scholarly work on divorce - why he didn't get one himself?" Leiter laughed at the memory, and remembered his father laughing at the suggestion, too.
Growing up in circumstances he says were unhappy, Leiter pointed out the irony of the book to his father. Leiter's father, in fact, wrote an influential book at the time about divorce in the Jewish faith. Born in Pittsburgh, his family expected him to become a rabbi, like his father and his grandfather. Leiter looked back at the circumstances in his life that led him to become a photographer at all. It was while that exhibit was on that Leiter gave the first - and only - radio interview of his life, on Lake Effect. But almost ten years ago, the Milwaukee Art Museum hosted a significant exhibit of his work. The exhibit has been written about in publications around the world, from The New York Times to the Washington Post and CNN.
Leiter, who died in 2013, was a pioneer in photographing street scenes - in color.Ī major retrospective exhibit of his work is on display now in London, at The Photographer's Gallery. Photographer Saul Leiter is finally getting the international attention his fans think he's deserved for more than a half-century.
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