About this Item
1st Printing. Signed. 152 pages. Published in 2008. Exhibition Monograph. One of the most important books on the photographic art and achievement of Saul Leiter. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out shortly after publication. The First Edition is now rare. A brilliant production by Gerhard Steidl: Regular-sized volume format. Gray hard boards with metallic-silver titles embossed on spine, as issued. Photographs by Saul Leiter. Text by Agnes Sire and other contributors. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper by Steidl in Gottingen, Germany to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition held at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson Paris in 2008. Presents, in its First Edition format, "Saul Leiter". The landmark sequel to "Saul Leiter: Early Color" (2006). The two pioneering Steidl titles ignited global interest in Leiter's work, serving as the basis of his status as the greatest photographic re-discovery of our time. Saul Leiter gave street photography a fresh, new look that differed from ALL of the other great street photographers of his - and our - time. Instead of the gritty, hard-edged, "in-your-face" imagery of Garry Winogrand (or Martin Parr today), Leiter's "look" is melancholy, ephemeral, and lyrical, deploying a consistently understated palette to convey some of the most sublime images of The Street we will ever see. Saul Leiter understood that photography is the exact opposite of painting (because he was good at both) : Painting is about a "vision" that one realizes on canvas. Photography is about developing and mastering a "look" - by taking thousands of photographs, even if or because one is Saul Leiter - that somehow becomes identifiably and uniquely one's own. Precisely because anyone can take photographs, a distinctive look is much harder, if not altogether impossible, to achieve than one thinks for most practicing photographers, who must inevitably fall back on the established look of a particular genre, whether it's portraiture, street photography, or the nude. The one great contribution of photography is to re-define the visual arts through its "look" aesthetics instead of through "vision", the counter-productive and exhausted idea it inherited from painting. Instead, Saul Leiter - and the truly great photographers such as Avedon, on the one hand, and Robert Frank, on the other - found and perfected a look that is uniquely theirs, and theirs alone, which all other (derivative) photographers imitate at their peril. An absolute "must-have" title for Saul Leiter collectors. An absolute "must-have" title for Saul Leiter collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Saul Leiter. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is an art photography classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. 107 plates. One of the greatest artist/photographers of the 20th century and our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SAUL LEITER TITLE IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 3865215874.
Seller Inventory # 22084
Contact seller
Report this item
