Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter’s photographs are of the rhythms that lie within the delicacy of the everyday, his vision, as decisive, as his colours, fluid. Raj Lalwani looks back.

- Raj Lalwani

Words elude when one tries to piece together the work of Saul Leiter, for his photographs are much like a mirage, like visual apparitions that tease, but don’t tell. His photos elude in the fact that they allude, in that they, in their use of dreamy colour and suggested subject matter, are a lot like free verse, reminding us of the familiar in unimaginably unfamiliar ways.

His genius is that he eludes, that one cannot pin him down. Colourist, sensualist, romanticist. Paintings, photographs. Painterly photographs. Painted-on photographs. But like all great pioneers, Degas, Vuillard, Matisse and Bonnard being his own heroes, Saul Leiter was someone who relentlessly continued to wander on the peripheries of tradition, to find his own path.  

A subject walks into the frame, much like the keys coming in, in a jazz song. Just that the subject isn’t really the subject, as it fuses itself amidst a series of intersecting visual planes. Light passes through glass, and water runs over, the initial subject breaking itself into multiple reflections, each presenting a distorted view. Like a musician experiencing an inspired spell of genius, improvising upon the original melody. Leiter’s photos are often about interplay, where the elements entwine into seamlessness. Like a bunch of musicians, each one on their own trip, coming together in a melange of play, of conflict and compromise, construct and confluence. Like jazz.