Early Color [2006]

Early Color by Saul Leiter [2006]

This is the first printing, from 2006. Purchased at release.
Copies are new in Publisher's Shrinkwrap, or wrapped in Steidl tissue paper.
Hardcover with dustjacket; 176 pages
Steidl
1.6 pounds; 8 x 1 x 8.2 inches
9783865211392

A beloved photobook classic from the pioneer of color photography This is the immensely successful Early Color (2008), which presents Saul Leiter's remarkable body of color work to the public for the first time in book form. Although Edward Steichen had exhibited some of Leiter's color photography at The Museum of Modern Art in 1953, it remained virtually unknown to the world thereafter.

Leiter moved to New York in 1946 to become a painter, but through his friendship with Richard Pousette-Dart he quickly recognized the creative potential of photography. Leiter continued to paint, exhibiting with Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning, but the camera remained his ever-present means of recording life in the metropolis. None of Leiter's contemporaries, with the partial exception of Helen Levitt, assembled a comparable body of work: subtle, often abstract compositions of lyrical, eloquent color.