In pictures: Saul Leiter's pioneering colour photography
- Published
Saul Leiter is an American artist born in Philadelphia but living and working in New York's East Village for the past 66 years.
He is perhaps best known for his paintings, yet his early abstract colour photographs helped to define the genre, with work appearing at the influential Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1950s.
By the 1960s his personal work was not widely seen as he turned his attention to fashion photography for magazines, including Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Vogue.
Yet Leiter continued to shoot on the streets of New York and Paris, amassing a collection of colour slides.
It was not until the end of the 20th Century that he began to re-examine the work, and more recently there has been a flurry of interest in his photographs which have once more caught the eye of art galleries and collectors.
He was also the subject of a recent documentary on BBC Four by film-maker Tomas Leach, In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter. The film follows Leiter as he sorts through an apartment full of memories.
Leiter's paintings and photographs are on show at the HackelBury Gallery in London until 27 July 2013.