In 1946, he moved to New York City to pursue his painting. Saul Leiter (1923-2013) was born in Pittsburgh, the son of a rabbi who was a distinguished Talmudic scholar. His abstracted forms and radically innovative compositions have a painterly quality that stands out among the work of his New York School contemporaries. Leiter made an enormous and unique contribution to photography with a highly prolific period in New York City in the 1940s and ’50s. With In My Room, he ushers viewers into his private world while retaining his strong sense of mystery. Leiter preferred solitude in life, and resisted any type of explanation or analysis of his work. The prolific Leiter, who painted and took pictures fervently up to his death, worked in relative obscurity well into his eighties. Leiter, who was also a painter, incorporates abstract elements into these photographs and often shows the influence of his favorite artists, including Bonnard, Vuillard, and Matisse. The exhibition and upcoming book offer a first-time look at this body of work, which Leiter began on his arrival in New York in 1946 and continued throughout the next two decades. In the 1970s, Leiter planned to make a book of his nudes, but never realized the project in his lifetime. Often illuminated by the lush natural light of Leiter’s studio in New York City’s East Village, these black-and-white images uncover the mutual and empathetic collaboration between the artist and his subjects. Many of the 35 photographs in the exhibition are on public view for the first time.įed by thrilling recent discoveries from Saul Leiter’s archive, the exhibition reveals the world of the artist and the women in his life through his studies of the female figure. The exhibition, which includes work from the mid-1940s through the early 1960s, will be the subject of an upcoming book, also titled In My Room, to be published by Steidl/Howard Greenberg Library. Deeply personal and contemplative, many of the images in Saul Leiter: In My Room share tender moments underscored by the subjects’ trust in the photographer.

Saul Leiter’s intimate photographs of his muses over three decades.

In my room saul leiter