PRESS RELEASE SAUL LEITER FRANKFURT AM MAIN, DECEM BER 2014 SAUL LEITER. RETROSPEKTIVE December 13, 2014 – March 1 , 2015 Opening: Friday, December 12 , 2014, 7 pm Press preview: December 12 , 2014, 11 pm From December 13, 2014 to March 1, 2015 Fotografie Forum Frankfurt presents a retrospective of the photographer and painter Saul Leiter . The exhibition includes more than 100 works and brings together a marvellous combination of his early black-and-white and colo ur street photography, fashion images , paintings , and his sketchbooks. Also on view are the works , which he made throughout the last years of his life, on the streets in his neighbourhood in New York’s East Village. Saul Leiter died shortly before his 90 th birthday in 2013 . This exhibition curated by Ingo Taubhon and Brigitte Woischnik is a cooperation with the House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg and the Saul Leiter Foundation. Pioneer of colour photography Saul Leiter was born in 1923 in Pittsburgh and it was not until a few years ago that his work received due recognition for its pioneering role in the emergence of colo ur photography. As early as 1946, and thus long before the representatives of “New Color Photography ” in the 1970s (such as William Eggleston and Stephen Shore) he was one of the first to use colo ur photography for his personal work, despite it being avoided by most artists of the day. Photography becomes painting Saul Leiter always saw himself as both painter and photographer . In his painting s and in his photographs he tended toward abstraction with an emphasis on surfaces. In many works , large deep black surfaces caused by shadows take up as much as three quarters of the photographs. Often Passers-by are not as individuals, but as blurred imp ressions of colour , behind panes of glass or wedged between house walls and traffic signs. He e xpresses a fluid transition between the abstract and the figurative in his paintings and photographs. Saul Leiter’s very unique street photography, is actually painting that has become photography, as Rolf Nobel writes in the book accompanying the exhibition. Urban photographic aesthetics In his photographs, the genres of street life, portraiture, still lives , fashion and architectural photography meld into a mixture . His subjects, such as shop windo ws, passers -by, cars, signs and umbrellas, were found in the direct vicinity of his apartment in New York, where he lived for almost 60 years. Characteristically h is images are created by the absence of clear detail s, the blurring of movement and the reduction in the depth of field, the compensation for low light or the often deliberate avoidance of the light . These aspects as well as a sense of alienation caused by photographing through windows or the use of reflections all blend to create a picture language of colour, fuelled by a semi-real, semi -abstract urban space. These works epitomize this re- discovered modern master of colo ur photography of the 1940s and 1950s. PRESS CONTACT Andrea Horvay E-MAIL presse@fffrankfur t.org MOBILE +49 (0)17620641531 page 1/3 TRÄGER Förderkreis Fotografie Forum Frankfurt e.V. Braubachstraße 30 -32, 60311 Frankfurt am Main TELEFON +49 (0) 69 29 17 26 TELEFAX +49 (0) 69 28 639 E - MAIL [email protected] www.fffrankfurt.org PRESS RELEASE SAUL LEITER From a self-taught artist to a fashion photographe r Saul Leiter (*1923 in Pittsburgh, †2013 in New York) discovered his passion for art early on and began painting as a teenager at the end of the 1940s. His family did not support him in his artistic endeavours as his father, a renowned Talmudic rabbi and scholar, always hoped his son Saul would one day follow him in the family tradition and become a rabbi. L eiter was self -taught, but by no means uneducated. Through reading he advanced his knowledge and understanding of art constantly. In this way, he could be certain that his own thought and artistic efforts were related to a historical context, as Carrie Spr inger, curator at the Whitney Museum in New York, points out in the catalogue. In 1946, shortly after he had moved to New York, Leiter got to know the artist Richard Poussette- Dart, who introduced him to photography, a medium that Leiter was fond of and which he quickly made his own. Leiter soon resolved to make use of photography not only as a means of making art but as a way of earning a living. Thanks to his good eye, his playful sense of humour, and his pronounced sense of elegance, Leiter swiftly emer ged as an extraordinary fashion photographer. In the 1950s, “LIFE” magazine published photo spreads of Saul Leiter’s first black -and-white images. His photographs were included in the exhibition “Always the Young Strangers” (1953) curated by Edward Steich en at the Museum of Modern Art. From 1958 to 1967, Leiter worked for “Harper’s Bazaar”. All in all he was to spend some 20 years photographing for both the se classic magazines and more recent ones, such as “Esquire” , “Harper’s”, “Show”, “Elle”, “British Vo gue”, “Queen” and “Nova”. “Saul Leiter. Retrospektive” at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt This exhibition is a cooperation of the House of Photography at Deichtorhallen Hamburg and Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. This extensi ve retrospective of Saul Leiter‘s oeuvre was curated by Ingo Taubhorn and Brigitte Woischnik in close cooperation with the artist before he died and with Margit Erb, Director Saul Leiter Foundation. This exhibition was first exhibited in Hamburg in 2012 , where it then travelled to Kunsthaus Wien. Publication The accompanying book to this exhibition, “Saul Leiter - Retrospektive”, published by Kehrer Verlag, edited by Ingo Taubhorn and Brigitte Woischnik, designed by Detlev Pusch, includes texts by Vince Aletti, Margit Erb, Adam Harrison Levy, Rolf Nobel, Ulrich Rüter, Carrie Springer, Ingo Taubhorn a nd Brigitte Woischnik . It is available in hardcover with 296 pages and 155 illustrations, in German/English for 58 Euro. Opening The exhibition “Saul Leiter. Retrospek tive ” will open on Friday, December 12, 2014, at 7pm. Opening speakers are Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt; Michael Loulakis, Chairman of the Board , Förderkreis Fotografie Forum Frankfurt; Ingo Taubhorn , Chief- Curator House of Photography /Deichtorhallen Hamburg and Brigitte Woischnik , Curator., (curators of the exhibition). PRESS CONTACT Andrea Horvay E-MAIL presse@fffrankfur t.org MOBILE +49 (0)17620641531 page 2/3 TRÄGER Förderkreis Fotografie Forum Frankfurt e.V. Braubachstraße 30 -32, 60311 Frankfurt am Main TELEFON +49 (0) 69 29 17 26 TELEFAX +49 (0) 69 28 639 E - MAIL [email protected] www.fffrankfurt.org PRESS RELEASE SAUL LEITER Special Events Saturday, December 13, 11 am Guided tour with the curators Ingo Taubhorn and Brigitte Woischnik through the exhibition “Saul Leiter. Retrospektive” The tour will be held in German . Friday, January 23, 2015, 6 pm Lecture “Hommage an Saul Leiter ” Margit Erb , Director Saul Leiter Foundation , and Brigitte Woischnik , co-curator of the exhibition , introduce the artist and person Saul Leiter . The lecture will be held in German and in English. Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 8 pm Film screening “In No Great Hurry 13 - Lessons In Life With Saul Leiter” A film by Tomas Leach (Producer and Director), 2012, GB/USA, 75 min The film will be showing in English. Wednesday, February 25, 2015, 8 pm Film screening “In No Great Hurry 13 - Lessons In Life With Saul Leiter” A film by Tomas Leach (Producer and Director), 2012, GB/USA, 75 min The film will be showing in English. Venue Fotografie Forum Frankfurt Braubachstraße 30–32, 60311 Frankfurt am Main Phone +49 (0) 69 29 17 26, Fax +49 (0) 69 28 63 9 E-mail: [email protected] www.fffrankfurt.org Opening hours during the exhibition : Tuesday–Sunday: 11 am–6 pm, Wed nesday: 11 am–8 pm, Monday closed. Holiday opening hours: December 24, 25 and 26, 2014 closed December 31, 2014 closed January 1, 2015 closed Admission: 6 € (reduced: 3 €) For more information about the exhibition and press images, please contact Andrea Horvay by phone +49 (0) 69 29 17 26 or by email at [email protected]. PRESS CONTACT Andrea Horvay E-MAIL presse@fffrankfur t.org MOBILE +49 (0)17620641531 page 3/3 TRÄGER Förderkreis Fotografie Forum Frankfurt e.V. Braubachstraße 30 -32, 60311 Frankfurt am Main TELEFON +49 (0) 69 29 17 26 TELEFAX +49 (0) 69 28 639 E - MAIL [email protected] www.fffrankfurt.org SAUL LEITER CV SAUL LEITER 1923 Born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1930s Attends Talmudical Academy in New York City 1935 (circa) Is given a Detrola camera by mother and begins photographing sporadically. 1940s (early) Leiter attends Telshe Yeshiva Rabbinical College in Cleveland 1946 Leaves theological college in Cleveland and moves to New York. Meets Abstract Exp ressionist painter Richard Pous ette-Dart who influences his interest in photography. 1947 Atte nds Henri Cartier -Bresson’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art ; meets and befriends W. Eugene Smith who gives him Alexey Brodovitch’s book Ballet 1948(circa) Begins working with color slide film. Works primarily with three cameras, Argosy C3, Auto Graf lex Junior and an early Rolleiflex. 1951 LIFE publishes his black -and-white series “The Wedding as a Funeral” September 3 issue. More work is featured in the LIFE November 26 issue (“Shoes of the Shoeshine Man”). 1952 Moves to East Tenth Street; founding of the co -operative Tanager Gallery. 1950s (late) Gives slide talk about his color work at “The Club,” an art space in the East Village. 1957 Steichen includes twenty of Leiter’s color photographs in his slide talk, “ Experimental Photography in Color” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.