Saul Leiter: In Search of Beauty

Leiter combined photography and painting all his life, and continued painting daily until his death in November 2013 at age 89. But the camera became the medium through which he managed to capture and interpret the life of New York City in multi-layered compositions, as well as in intimate scenes, as nobody had done before.

The lyricism and intensity of Leiter's vision come into full play in the artist's eloquent handling of colour, which is the focus of In Search of Beauty, the opening volume of the immersive Saul Leiter newsprint and ink series.  To the rapid recording of the spontaneous unfolding of life on the street, Leiter adds an unconventional sense of form and a brilliantly improvisational, and
frequently abstract, use of true-to-life colors and tone.  When the monograph Early Color was published in 2006, comprising work mostly done in the 1950s, it immediately established Leiter as a pioneer in colour photography and ignited a newfound worldwide interest in his career that continues to this day.

-Roger Szmulewicz