✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Visual Arts

Saul Leiter, Photographers Gallery ★★★★★

22 Jan 16 – 03 Apr 16, Opening times: Mon - Sat, 10:00 - 18:00, Thu, 10:00 - 20:00, Sun 11:00 - 18:00

Get to know one of the first serious colour photographers, Saul Leiter. The Photographers' Gallery stage their major retrospective this year

By CW Contributor on 21/1/2016

5 CW readers are interested
Taxi, c 1957 © Saul Leiter Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, Saul Leiter London 2016
Taxi, c 1957 © Saul Leiter Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, Saul Leiter London 2016
Saul Leiter, Photographers Gallery 4 Saul Leiter, Photographers Gallery Ella Cory-Wright
Saul Leiter is one of the most important figures in the histories of both colour and street photography. This year, The Photographers Gallery explore his legacy with Saul Leiter: Retrospective.

Nowadays, when we think of photography, we think of colour photography, which has firmly become the mainstream. In the '50s, though, barely anyone was using colour technology. It was seen as crass; a cheapening threat to formalism.


French photographer and king of monochrome Henri Cartier-Bresson jettisoned the medium in 1952, fearing that 'this complex new element may tend to prejudice the achievement of life and movement' of photography. American street photographer Robert Frank said 'the colours of photography are black and white'. This resistance to colour and its possibilities lasted right up to the 1970s. One man, though, was walking the streets of '50s New York, capturing moments of city life in full colour. What a delight these pictures have turned out to be.


Leiter was born in Pennsylvania, in 1923, to an Orthodox Jewish family. Instead of becoming the rabbi his family had imagined, the young artist ran to New York, to pursue painting and photography. He took fashion photographs to put bread on the table, but took to the streets in his spare time, photographing people, cars, windows, umbrellas, hats, coats, dogs, or whatever else he encountered. Sometimes, just shapes: as a painter, Leiter was drawn to a lyrical abstraction; to suggestion over precision. His gauzy, quiet photographs are at odds with the mania of the city he loved. "I like it when one is not certain what one sees," he said of his own work. "When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion."


(Also, on a rather more pedestrian note, his pictures provide a wonderful window onto the fashions and faces of '50s NYC.)


We love it.


What Saul Leiter, Photographers Gallery
Where The Photographers' Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London, W1F 7LW | MAP
Nearest tube Oxford Circus (underground)
When 22 Jan 16 – 03 Apr 16, Opening times: Mon - Sat, 10:00 - 18:00, Thu, 10:00 - 20:00, Sun 11:00 - 18:00
Price £Free until noon (Mon - Sun) and then £3 / £2.5 concessions
Website Click here to book



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Harrison Ford in Shrinking, AppleTV+ (Photo: Apple)
What to watch on TV this week
Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings

A little more...

  • click for the best
    exhibitions in London

Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Social Eating House

    Social Eating House has a dream menu of thoughtfully sourced British ingredients put together in an unexpected yet wholly seductive manner. For a real piece of action in the kitchen, book to sit at the chef's table – it really does immerse you.

    Read more...
    Book Map
  • Ember Yard

    Spanish and Italian open wood-fired cooking is the speciality of this lively Soho outpost from the Salt Yard Group. The ibérico presa with whipped jamón butter is a delight, and diners must try one of the smoked cocktails – the negroni is made with smoked ice and garnished with grilled orange, and is so compelling that one is never enough.

    Read more...
    Book Map
  • The Good Egg, Soho

    There's chocolate babka made in the bakery every morning, wondrous proper Israeli fluffy soft rounds of pita cooked to order, a mangal oven for char-grilling and a gorgeous pink and turquoise retro interior -- what's not to like?

    Read more...
    Book Map
5

Photography

Photographers' Gallery

Art

Exhibition

We Love

You might like

  • Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France 1951 (negative); mid- to late 1960s (print) Paul Strand 1 MB © Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation. V&A Paul Strand exhibition London 2015

    Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century review, V&A ★★★★★

  • Audience in Independencia Stadium, Montevideo, during Peñarol Athletics Club soccer play. Unknown date, between 1957 and 1973. El Popular Private Collection Reproduction Authorized by Aurelio González and Centro de Fotografía, photography London 2016

    Rosângela Rennó: Río-Montevideo, Photographers' Gallery ★★★★★

  • Alec Soth photographer, Science Museum London

    Gathered Leaves: Photographs by Alec Soth, Science Museum

  • Robert Frank, 'London Street', 1951, Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum, Barbican: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers, Martin Parr Exhibition

    Strange and Familiar review: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×