Saul Leiter - New York Reflections

The Jewish Historical Museum presents more than 60 colour and 40 black-and-white examples of the acclaimed artist Saul Leiter's street photography, as well as a small selection of fashion photographs, paintings and painted photographs.

Tranquil moments of everyday beauty

Saul Leiter is particularly celebrated for his painterly colour photographs of street life in New York, taken between 1948 and 60. Amid the hectic life of the city Leiter managed to capture tranquil moments of everyday beauty, transforming mundane objects - a red umbrella in a snowstorm, a foot resting on a bench in the metro - into what has been described as 'urban visual poetry'.

Near-abstract compositions

Leiter's photographs are frequently layered, near-abstract compositions of reflections and shadows, which recall paintings by abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, with whom Leiter felt a strong affinity. He is seen as belonging to the New York School of Photographers, a group of innovative artists, most of them Jewish, who achieved fame in New York in the period 1936-1963, primarily with their images of the street and their documentary photography.