I'm not a person in this dream - I'm a place

Revolving Doors

2012-02-22T11:58:00.000+01:00

Revolving Doors, New York City, Lee Friedlander, 1963

Lee Friedlander

2012-02-21T10:20:00.001+01:00

Lee Friedlander, 1960s(?)

Delancey Street

2012-02-20T23:40:00.001+01:00

Reflection, New York (Delancey Street), Lisette Model, c.1940

First Reflection

2012-02-11T20:28:00.000+01:00

First Reflection, Lisette Model, 1939

AUPT’S

2012-02-10T11:55:00.000+01:00

Saul Leiter, 1940s(?)

1940s(?)

2012-02-05T11:44:00.000+01:00

Saul Leiter, 1940s(?)

2012-02-04T13:31:00.000+01:00

A short clip from a forthcoming documentary about Saul Leiter. Directed by Tomas Leach.

Resurrected

2012-01-29T22:50:00.000+01:00

Interview by Adam Harrison Levy in Design Observer, 2009

Sea, Saul Leiter, 1960s, gouache, casein and watercolor on board

Saul Leiter is sitting in the corner of his East Village studio apartment nibbling on a madeleine. The room is dense with photographs and paintings, piles of books, partially worked canvases, stacks of newspapers, and a collection of cameras, watches and pens, the last of which are arrayed like bouquets in cups. The putty-colored walls are peeling and a bank of north facing windows are without shades. “If you’ve spent a good part of your life being ignored, there are great advantages. People leave you alone.” He’s been left alone for almost forty years. “People are very taken with the idea of success. Everybody wants to be successful, except me.”

At eighty-five he has jovial eyes, tousled grey hair and an approachable but wary manner. He once bumped into the late photographer Helen Levitt in a bookstore. “You look familiar,” she said to him. He replied, “I am.” But he’s hesitant about public attention. “I often find that artists are self-serving when they talk about their work” he says, “and I don’t want to be like that.” There are other reasons for his wariness as well.

Up until just a few years ago Leiter was all but forgotten, just another elderly East Village resident shuffling to the corner deli to get a pint of milk. And yet in the mid 1950s his photographs had appeared in the Museum of Modern Art, he had exhibited paintings with William DeKooning and Philip Guston and, in the early 1960s, he had a number of prestigious photography assignments for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. His fashion spreads alternated with those of Richard Avedon’s. It was a promising start at a time when such early achievement often led to major art world success.

Leiter insists that he alone bears responsibility for his later obscurity and the inevitable poverty he suffered as a result. He was never a careerist. By temperament he prefers to work diligently and in relative isolation. A friend once said to him, “Saul, I’ve never known anybody who could resist opportunity as much as you.”

He reaches down and riffles through a stack of paintings that lie in an opened portfolio at his feet. These are abstract works, painted on small pieces of paper and vibrantly colored. He picks one up. “DeKooning liked this one,” he says with a trace of astonishment. “He liked the fact that I left on the toilet paper I used to dry it. That appealed to him.”

Leiter was making these paintings (which are appearing here for the first time on the web) at a time when, more famously, Mark Rothko and Hans Hoffman were exploring similar ideas and techniques. “A friend of mine told me that if I had just painted big I would have been one of the boys.” He lets out a rippling and ironic laugh.

The reasons for Leiter’s lack of recognition are complicated. It was partly due to his unwillingness to promote himself. Characteristically, he tells a story by way of explanation. While looking through a book recently, he came across a letter stuck between its pages. The letter, written in the mid 1950s, is from Betty Parsons, whose gallery famously helped launch the careers of many of the Abstract Expressionists, including Jackson Pollock. It’s an invitation to show work in her gallery. He never responded. Why? “I probably had to frame my paintings and I didn’t have the money.”

He admits to deeper reasons. Leiter is the son of an Orthodox Rabbi who was venerated for his Talmudic commentaries by a select group of scholars: “My father was a towering figure.” He had high expectations for his son. Leiter spent his early years in rigorous daily study both religious and secular; by the age of twelve he was reading Turgenev, Proust and Dostoevsky. But the religious side of his education did not hold. Instead, he was drawn to books about art, which he studied in the well-stocked Pittsburg University Library. He delighted in Peruvian tapestry, Tantric art and Japanese calligraphy. He devoured books about the western canon as well, fully absorbing Kandinsky’s explorations of abstraction as well as the work of Picasso, Matisse and Bonnard.

Inspired by his reading Leiter, with minimal encouragement or schooling, taught himself to paint. These early abstract works, dating from the mid to late 1940s, show a remarkably confident use of line, color and composition. The energy of his brushwork is palpable. When John Cage and Merce Cunningham saw a show of these early paintings when visiting the Outlines Gallery in Pittsburg in 1945, they bought one.

Leiter was still living with his parents at the time. His father did not approve. When a notice appeared in the local Jewish paper announcing a second art exhibition, his father actually wept with shame. Although he had been groomed since childhood to continue his family’s rabbinical tradition, he soon abandoned his theological studies. He boarded a bus at midnight and escaped to New York.

Leiter rises from his chair and snakes his way through the clutter. Talking about his life has triggered a memory. He digs through a teetering stack of his black and white photographs. “I have a picture of myself somewhere, where I am painting. I always worked on the floor.” He shuffles through the stack. A portrait of a young John Cage flashes by, followed by a series of languorous nudes and then a haggard looking Diane Arbus, who was a neighbor. He reaches the bottom of the stack and gives up with a sigh. He then smiles mischievously. “On my tombstone, not that I want a tombstone, it should read: 'He tried but he couldn’t find it.' ”

Seated back in his chair, he admits that he didn’t manage his life properly. “Maybe I was irresponsible. But part of the pleasure of being alive is that I didn’t take everything as seriously as one should.” Even while his commercial photography assignments were dwindling throughout the 1970s he continued to paint, entirely for his own pleasure. During the late 1980s, at a time when he was reduced to selling off books for extra money, he bumped into an old acquaintance. “You know, you used to be a big thing in the 1960s” the friend had said to him, “and now you are nothing.”

That is changing. In the past few years, two books of his early color photography were published to great acclaim: Saul Leiter: Early Color edited by Martin Harrison and the monograph Saul Leiter. In these photographs, reality is broken up and made complicated by awnings and store windows as well as by reflections, deep shadows and weather, in the form of mist, snow and rain. It’s a distinctive visual diction whose haunting beauty derives in no small part from Leiter’s use of color: cadmium reds rhyming with silky blacks which are in turn set off by whites in a visual poetry all his own. The first edition of the book sold out almost immediately and sales of his photographs took off.

And now, in mid September, the Knoedler Gallery, in association with the Howard Greenberg Gallery, will be showing a selection of these early paintings, the first time this work will be seen by the public in years. Two more books, this time of his black-and-white photographs, are currently in the works.

Leiter views his late success with a poignant mixture of pride and loss. He seems genuinely pleased with the recognition while simultaneously anxious about the implications.

Together, we leave his apartment and slowly walk towards a local deli, where he is going to pick up some borsht for dinner. We pause on the street. “I’ve been resurrected,” he says ruefully as he turns the corner and waves goodbye.

Adam Harrison Levy, Design Observer, 2009

White Brooklyn

2012-01-28T10:28:00.000+01:00

White Brooklyn, Saul Leiter, 1949

Shirt

2012-01-27T22:32:00.000+01:00

Shirt, Saul Leiter, 1948

Dog in Doorway

2012-01-26T20:22:00.000+01:00

Dog in Doorway, Paterson, Saul Leiter, 1952

Taxi

2012-01-25T22:50:00.001+01:00

Taxi, Saul Leiter, 1957

Bus

2012-01-24T22:21:00.000+01:00

Bus, Saul Leiter, 1954

Phone Call

2012-01-23T21:47:00.000+01:00

Phone Call, Saul Leiter, 1957

Reflection

2012-01-22T22:33:00.000+01:00

Reflection, Saul Leiter, 1958

Taxi

2012-01-21T18:51:00.000+01:00

Taxi, Saul Leiter, 1956

Near the Tanager

2012-01-20T10:16:00.000+01:00

Near the Tanager, Saul Leiter, 1954

Street Scene

2012-01-19T10:45:00.000+01:00

Street Scene, Saul Leiter, 1959

T

2012-01-18T13:40:00.000+01:00

T, Saul Leiter, 1950

Circa 1950, New York

2012-01-17T18:24:00.000+01:00

New York, circa 1950, Saul Leiter

Snow

2012-01-16T09:30:00.000+01:00

Snow, Saul Leiter, 1960

Canopy

2012-01-15T22:21:00.000+01:00

Canopy, Saul Leiter, 1958

Postmen

2012-01-14T23:40:00.000+01:00

Postmen, Saul Leiter, 1952

Granville Street from Granville Bridge

2012-01-13T22:32:00.000+01:00

Granville Street from Granville Bridge, Fred Herzog, 1966

Elysium Cleaners

2012-01-12T21:29:00.000+01:00

Elysium Cleaners, Fred Herzog, 1958

Room with Television

2012-01-11T06:39:00.000+01:00

Room with Television, Fred Herzog, 1967

My Room, Harwood Street

2012-01-10T18:05:00.000+01:00

My Room, Harwood Street, Fred Herzog, 1958

Girl with Handbag

2012-01-09T17:24:00.000+01:00

Girl with Handbag, Fred Herzog, 1960

Two Orange Cars

2012-01-08T09:06:00.000+01:00

Orange Cars, Powell, Fred Herzog, 1973

Two White Cars

2012-01-07T00:22:00.000+01:00

Two White Cars, Quebec City, Fred Herzog, 1969

Commercial Hotel

2012-01-06T16:42:00.000+01:00

Commercial Hotel, Fred Herzog, 1966

Bargain Shop

2012-01-05T00:46:00.000+01:00

Bargain Shop, Fred Herzog, 1962

San Francisco

2012-01-04T11:36:00.000+01:00

San Francisco, Fred Herzog, 1962

Man with Bandage

2012-01-03T01:02:00.000+01:00

Man with Bandage, Fritz Herzog, 1968

Vancouver, BC, 1958

2012-01-02T19:10:00.000+01:00

Two Men in Fog, Vancouver, BC, Fred Herzog, 1958

Monessen, Pennsylvania, 1983

2012-01-01T02:18:00.000+01:00

Morning in Monessen, Pennsylvania, Jerome Liebling, 1983

Lights Off

2011-12-31T19:43:00.000+01:00

”Untitled” a 1955 painting by Mark Rothko, sits on display during a fall auction preview at Sotheby’s in New York. (Tom Starkweather/Bloomberg)

Large paintings immediately framing an entrance in a Mark Rothko show at Sidney Janis Gallery in the mid-fifties.

’As in the past Rothko placed works close together; and if, as happened in one case, a canvas extended beyond its wall and into a doorway, that didn't bother him. He wished, as he had written Katharine Kuh, to ”defeat” the actual physical space of a room. As Janis realized, Rothko ”created an ambience that way. He knew very well how his paintings worked, probably better than . . . any other artist in his generation.” Rothko also used lightning to create an ambience, not the bright light he had sought for his ”Fifteen Americans” room at MOMA, but a very dim light, an obscurity from which the paintings – soon themselves to grow dark – only slowly emerged. This insistence caused some troubles for Janis, who didn't want his commercial space looking like a cave. ”No matter how low it was he would reduce it,” Janis complained. ”It made the gallery so dismal, but he wanted some kind of mystery attached to his painting.” Philip Guston recalled coming with Rothko to visit one of his Janis shows: ”they strolled into the gallery and Mark, without a word, switched off half the lights.” When Janis came out from his office, the three men ”chatted a bit and, in a pause in the conversation, Janis slid off and turned all the lights back on. Rothko didn't say anything.” Janis returned to his office. As the two painters were leaving, just before they entered the elevator, ”Rothko turned half the lights back off again”’

From Mark Rothko: A Biography by James E. B. Breslin

Untitled 1955

2011-12-30T09:22:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1955, oil on canvas, 234 x 175,3 cm

Ochre and Red on Red

2011-12-29T01:11:00.000+01:00

Ochre and Red on Red, Mark Rothko, 1954, oil on canvas, 235,3 x 162 cm

Green and Maroon

2011-12-28T23:56:00.000+01:00

Green and Maroon, Mark Rothko, 1953, oil on canvas, 231,4 x 139,4 cm

No 15

2011-12-27T00:06:00.000+01:00

No 15, Mark Rothko, 1952, oil on canvas, 233,3 x 203,2 cm

No 3/No 13

2011-12-26T22:03:00.000+01:00

No 3/No 13, Mark Rothko, 1949

Untitled 1949

2011-12-25T21:26:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1949

No 8

2011-12-24T18:41:00.000+01:00

No 8, Mark Rothko, 1949, oil and mixed media on canvas, 228.3 x 167.3 cm

Mark Rothko by William Heick

2011-12-23T14:49:00.000+01:00

Mark Rothko, California School of Fine Arts, William Heick, 1949-50

Untitled 1948

2011-12-22T15:57:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1948, 155 x 118.7 cm

No 1 (No 18)

2011-12-21T14:01:00.000+01:00

No 1 (No 18), Mark Rothko, 1948

Untitled 1947

2011-12-20T23:40:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1947

Untitled 1946/47

2011-12-19T23:06:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, ca 1946/47

Untitled 1946

2011-12-18T19:15:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1946, oil on canvas, 99.9 x 69.9 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Vision at End of Day

2011-12-17T15:19:00.000+01:00

Vision at End of Day, Mark Rothko,1946, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127.1 cm

Gesture(?)

2011-12-16T15:11:00.000+01:00

Gesture(?), Mark Rothko, 1945/46, oil on canvas, 79.7 x 100.7 cm

Rites of Lilith

2011-12-15T15:28:00.000+01:00

Rites of Lilith, Mark Rothko, 1945

Archaic Idol

2011-12-14T15:12:00.000+01:00

Archaic Idol, Mark Rothko, 1945

Gethsemane

2011-12-13T15:39:00.000+01:00

Gethsemane, Mark Rothko, 1944

Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea

2011-12-12T19:07:00.000+01:00

Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea, Mark Rothko, 1944

Untitled 1943

2011-12-11T15:49:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1943

Untitled 1941-42

2011-12-10T17:59:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1941-42

Seascape

2011-12-09T14:57:00.000+01:00

Seascape, Mark Rothko, 1940

Untitled (Portrait)

2011-12-08T14:29:00.000+01:00

Untitled (Portrait), Mark Rothko, 1939

The Party

2011-12-07T15:51:00.000+01:00

The Party, Mark Rothko, 1938

Untitled 1937

2011-12-06T15:33:00.000+01:00

Untitled, Mark Rothko, 1937

Mark Rothko, Yorktown Heights

2011-12-05T10:19:00.000+01:00

Mark Rothko, Yorktown Heights, ca. 1949, Consuelo Kanaga

Black, Black on Wine

2011-12-04T17:55:00.000+01:00

Black, Black on Wine, acrylic on paper mounted on panel, 84.4 x 65.4 cm, Mark Rothko, 1968

No. 2

2011-12-03T23:30:00.000+01:00

No. 2, Mark Rothko, 1964

No. 7

2011-12-02T23:56:00.000+01:00

No. 7, Mark Rothko, 1964

'square grave in the woods'

2011-12-01T23:58:00.000+01:00

No. 12 (Black on Dark Sienna on Purple), Mark Rothko, 1960

”it was a childhood memory of his family and relatives talking about a Czarist pogrom. The Cossacks took the Jews from the village to the woods and made them dig a large grave. Rothko said he pictured that square grave in the woods so vividly that he wasn't sure the massacre hadn't happened in his lifetime. He said he’d always been haunted by the image of that grave, and that in some profound way it was locked into his painting.” Al Jensen, a close friend to Mark Rothko, cited by James E. B. Breslin in Mark Rothko: A Biography.

The Cry

2011-11-27T09:33:00.001+01:00

Untitled (The Cry), Barnett Newman, 1946, brush and ink on paper, 36 x 24 in. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

The Sonderkommando Photographs

2011-11-25T11:20:00.000+01:00

Birkenau Extermination Camp, 1944, attributed to a prisoner from Greece named Alex.

The Sonderkommando Photographs

2011-11-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

Birkenau Extermination Camp, 1944, attributed to a prisoner from Greece named Alex.

The Sonderkommando Photographs

2011-11-23T16:07:00.001+01:00

Birkenau Extermination Camp, 1944, attributed to a prisoner from Greece named Alex.

The Sonderkommando Photographs

2011-11-22T23:18:00.001+01:00

Images from Birkenau, 1944.

"The Sonderkommando photographs were taken bymembers of the Sonderkommando of crematorium V: Alex fromGreece (his full name is unknown), Shlomo Dragon and his brotherJosel, Alter Szmul Fajnzylberg (known in the camp as StanisîawJankowski), and David Szmulewski.

/---/A note [describing the images] smuggled out of the camp by the political prisoners JózefCyrankiewicz and Stanisîaw Kîodziãski on September 4, 1944/.../:

Urgent. Send two iron reels of film (2 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.) as soon as possible.It is possible to take pictures. We send you photographs from Birkenau—people who have been gassed. The photograph shows a heap of bodiespiled outdoors. Bodies were burned outdoors when the crematoriumcould not keep pace with the number of bodies to be burned. In theforeground are bodies ready to be thrown on the heap. Another photo-graph shows one of the places in the forest where people were told toundress, allegedly for a bath, but in fact before being driven to the gaschambers. Send a reel as soon as possible. Send the enclosed photographsto Tell."

From The Sonderkommando Photographs by Dan Stone

More about how the images were taken here

Dead Outside National Palace

2011-11-07T20:37:00.000+01:00

Dead outside National Palace during one of the outbreaks, Mexico City, Manuel Ramos, ca. 1913

Charred Corpse

2011-11-05T20:24:00.000+01:00

Charred corpse of a victim of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, Arnold Genthe, April, 1906

Burning Dead (Postcard from the Mexican Revolution)

2011-11-04T20:07:00.000+01:00

Burning dead, Ojinaga. Walter H. Horne, ca. 1910-1916

Cemetery (Postcard from the Mexican Revolution)

2011-11-03T16:29:00.000+01:00

Cemetery, Juarez, Mex., Walter H. Horne, 1913

Battlefield (Postcard from the Mexican Revolution)

2011-11-02T11:28:00.000+01:00

Dead bodies on a Mexican battlefield, Walter H. Horne, 1913

Triple Execution (Postcards from the Mexican Revolution)

2011-11-01T18:08:00.000+01:00

Triple execution in Mexico #2, Triple execution in Mexico #3 and Bodies of 3 men lying as they fell after being executed. Walter H. Horne, January 15, 1916

Yncineración (Postcard from the Mexican Revolution)

2011-10-31T22:46:00.000+01:00

Yncineración de cadaveres en Balbuena, Mexico, February 1913. Photographer unkown.

Dead Bodies (Postcard from the Mexican Revolution)

2011-10-30T14:06:00.002+01:00

Walter Horne, ca. 1913

Dachau, 1945

2011-10-29T23:30:00.000+02:00

Dachau, 1945. (Photo AP)

Dead SS Guard in the Canal

2011-10-25T23:30:00.000+02:00

Dead SS Guard in the Canal, Dachau, Germany, Lee Miller, 1945

Exploding Hand

2011-10-24T15:18:00.002+02:00

Untitled (Exploding Hand), Lee Miller, Paris ca.1930

Sunday Morning

2011-10-23T08:55:00.000+02:00

Sunday Morning, Saul Leiter, 1947

Cambridge, 1972

2011-10-22T15:12:00.001+02:00

Cambridge, 1972, Jacob Holdt

Women Are Beautiful

2011-10-21T16:57:00.004+02:00

World’s Fair from the series Women Are Beautiful, Gary Winogrand, New York, 1964

Geologists Eating Lunch in a Poppyfield.

2011-10-19T17:29:00.004+02:00

Geologists eating lunch in a poppyfield. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Detached Stairwell

2011-10-18T19:20:00.002+02:00

Detached stairwell on Olive View Hospital. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Cracks at Window Corners

2011-10-04T09:36:00.000+02:00

Cracks at window corners: Typical wall damage around windows from earthquake shaking earthquake damage, Northridge earthquake. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Cracked Bridges Abutments

2011-10-03T18:29:00.001+02:00

Cracked bridges abutments. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Glacier Groove in Precambrian Gneiss

2011-10-02T18:12:00.000+02:00

Glacier groove in Precambrian gneiss. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Mt. San Gorgonio

2011-10-01T01:08:00.006+02:00

Oblique aerial view NW along the axis of Indio Hills. San Andreas fault system, Mission Creek fault, San Andreas fault. and Oblique aerial view NW along the trace of the Banning fault. Mt. San Gorgonio in the rear. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Durmid Folds

2011-09-30T00:39:00.000+02:00

Oblique aerial view of Durmid folds. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

East of the Mouth of Painted Canyon

2011-09-29T13:39:00.001+02:00

A view west of the folds under the "San Andreas" thrust flap east of the mouth of Painted Canyon. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Across Durmid Hills and San Andreas Fault

2011-09-28T00:18:00.000+02:00

An oblique air view NW across Durmid Hills and San Andreas fault with Bat Caves Buttes and eroded floor of ancient Lake Cahuilla. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Adjacent to the San Andreas Fault

2011-09-27T21:40:00.001+02:00

Oblique air photo of folds adjacent to the San Andreas fault. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Along Painted Canyon

2011-09-25T17:37:00.000+02:00

An oblique air view NW along Painted Canyon fault, which separates the central and platform blocks in the Mecca Hills. Basement outcrop and thrust flaps also shown. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

From Indio Hills to Mecca Hills

2011-09-24T00:30:00.000+02:00

Oblique aerial view SE along the trace of Banning-Mission Creek fault, from Indio Hills to Mecca Hills. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester

Syncline

2011-09-23T15:25:00.002+02:00

View SW at Syncline in Hanging Wall of Mecca Hills. Fault Ponan "Cascades". From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.

Brule and Chadron Formations

2011-09-22T17:08:00.000+02:00

Badlands of South Dakota, Brule and Chadron Formations. From the Geology Teaching Slides of Dr. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester.