For 60 years, the American quietly captured small, luminous details of life on the streets of New York. He was also a notable painter. The biggest UK show of his work will celebrate this remarkable, self-effacing artist
One evening in 1946, Saul Leiter took a train from his native Pittsburgh to New York. Aged 22, he was leaving behind his family and friends as well as the life that had been mapped out for him by his father, an esteemed orthodox rabbi, who had expected his son to follow in his footsteps. “I turned away from everything he believed in and cared about,” Leiter would later say, that decision having caused a rift between them that was never healed.
That youthful act of self-determination led to a long estrangement from his family, though his mother secretly kept in touch with him. It also started Leiter on a singular creative journey that would culminate some 60 years later with his belated canonisation as one of the most gifted and mysterious photographers of the latter half of the 20th century.
