The Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York is commemorating the 100th anniversary of photographer Saul Leiter's birth with a comprehensive exhibition running from December 2, 2023, through February 10, 2024. "Saul Leiter: Centennial" features more than 40 photographs, paintings, and painted photographs, with many pieces being displayed publicly in the United States for the first time. The exhibition, developed in collaboration with the Saul Leiter Foundation, coincides with a new publication titled "Saul Leiter: The Centennial Retrospective," published by Thames & Hudson in November.
Born on December 3, 1923, Saul Leiter dedicated over six decades to photography and painting, working on his art nearly every day. He emerged as a pioneering figure in color photography during New York City's highly productive artistic period of the 1950s. His innovative compositions and abstracted forms possessed a distinctive painterly quality that set him apart from his New York School contemporaries. Leiter typically found inspiration within just a few blocks of his lower Manhattan apartment, transforming ordinary scenes into extraordinary art by capturing intimate moments both indoors and on the city streets.
The Howard Greenberg Gallery exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of Leiter's diverse artistic output. Visitors can view his black-and-white and color photographs, including portraits and cityscapes from the 1940s through 1960s, alongside his paintings featuring abstract watercolors and painted photographs that he continued creating until the end of his life. The show also highlights his fashion photography work for Harper's Bazaar from around 1960, demonstrating the breadth of his commercial and artistic endeavors.
Anne Morin, who curated a recent Saul Leiter exhibition at Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France, and serves as director of diChroma photography in Madrid, offered insight into the complexity of Leiter's work. "Paintings, photographs, color, black and white, street photography, fashion photography – approaching the work of Saul Leiter is complex," Morin noted. "Because of the cross-disciplinary dimension of his work, the artist/photographer occupies a very special place in the history of photography. As a collector of minute fragments of the world around him, Leiter wove a body of work of extraordinary density."
Leiter's artistic journey began in Pittsburgh, where he was born as the son of a distinguished Talmudic scholar and rabbi. In 1946, he relocated to New York City to pursue painting, but his artistic path took an unexpected turn shortly after his arrival. His friendship with Abstract Expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart, who was experimenting with photography, sparked Leiter's growing interest in the medium. This interest was further cultivated through his relationship with photographer W. Eugene Smith and exposure to photography exhibitions in New York, particularly Henri Cartier-Bresson's show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947.
Leiter's talent gained recognition when Edward Steichen included his black-and-white photographs in the exhibition "Always the Young Strangers" at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953. His career expanded into fashion photography in the late 1950s when art director Henry Wolf began publishing Leiter's color fashion work in Esquire and later in Harper's Bazaar. For the next two decades, Leiter worked as a fashion photographer, with his images appearing in prestigious publications including Show, Elle, British Vogue, Queen, and Nova.
Despite his success, Leiter faced significant challenges in the early 1980s when financial difficulties forced him to close his Fifth Avenue commercial studio. For nearly two decades, he lived and worked in relative obscurity, largely forgotten by the art world. His fortunes changed dramatically in 2006 with the publication of "Saul Leiter: Early Color," a groundbreaking monograph produced with the help of writer and curator Martin Harrison and Howard Greenberg Gallery. Published by Steidl in Germany, this "little book" became an overnight international sensation, firmly establishing Leiter as an early pioneer in color photography history.
The renewed interest in Leiter's work led to significant museum recognition. In 2006, the Milwaukee Museum of Art held the first U.S. museum exhibition of his photographs, marking the beginning of a series of solo museum and gallery shows across the United States and Europe. Today, his work is held in prestigious collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the National Gallery of Australia; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Milwaukee Art Museum; and the Yale University Art Gallery.
The Saul Leiter Foundation, established in 2014 and directed by Margit Erb and Michael Parillo, continues to preserve the artist's legacy and maintain his vast archive. The foundation organizes educational programs, exhibitions, and publications, including the current centennial retrospective that presents both iconic Leiter works and new discoveries made in the decade since the artist's death in 2013. The foundation is also working toward completing a comprehensive catalogue raisonné that will be available for study by students, curators, writers, and art professionals. The centennial exhibition opened with a reception on Saturday, December 2, from 3 to 5 p.m., at the Howard Greenberg Gallery located at 41 East 57th Street, 8th Floor, New York.
