Unseen Saul Leiter

A new book of 76 images we haven't seen before begins to uncover the treasures hidden away in the Saul Leiter archive, says Damien Demolder, and reveals a whole lot about the great man's life

- Damien Demolder

Most of us think of Saul Leiter as a street photographer. We probably know him for his stylish documentary of the atmosphere that existed in parts of the New York of the fifties and sixties. He did though spend much of his working life as a professional photographer working for fashion magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Queen, Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar, and his street work was something of a hobby he pursued in his spare time. His fashion work has for the most part disappeared into the mists of time, while his personal passion project propelled him – late in life, it has to be said – to the attention of the world. To date we’ve been able to see only a fraction of the street images he recorded but the Saul Leiter Foundation, headed by wife and husband team Margit Erb and Michael Parillo, has been sorting through the 60,000 images he left behind so the rest of the world can get to see what it has been missing.