Saul Leiter

Personal Information: Saul Leiter (*1923 in Pittsburgh, 2013 in New York) was an American photographer and painter. Since 1946, long before the representatives of New Color Photography in the 1970s like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, he was one of the first to use the then-derided color photography for his free artistic shots. His works blend the genres of street, life, portrait, fashion, and architectural photography. He finds his subjects, such as shop windows, passersby, cars, signs, and repeatedly umbrellas, in the immediate vicinity of his New York apartment. Margit Erb is the founder and director of the Saul Leiter Foundation. She represented Leiter from 1996 until his death in 2013 at the Howard Green Gallery and also assisted the artist in organizing his archive. She was involved in all of Leiter's books. Together with her husband Michael Parillo, she is responsible for preserving Leiter's extensive archive, which is located in the former studio of the artist in New York City's East Village. Michael Parillo is the deputy director of the Saul Leiter Foundation, where he has been working since 2015 after twenty years as an editor and music and lifestyle journalist. Together with his wife, Margit Erb, he is engaged in compiling a digital catalog of Leiter's works.