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| Saul Leiter, Painted Nude Courtesy of the Saul Leiter Foundation and Sylph Editions Today I received a new retrospective photo-book – Saul Leiter – Painted Nudes. Painted Nudes collects 70 of the several hundred unseen works Saul Leiter made between 1970 and 1990 by applying gouache, watercolours and casein to his black-and-white nude photographic portraits of his lovers and models.
Even in his 80s, when he was belatedly acknowledged as a
pioneer of colour photography, Saul Leiter – (who died
aged 89 in November 2013) – steadfastly refused to be canonised by the
art world. “In order to build a career and be successful,” he said, “one has to
be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music and paint when I
feel like it.”
Saul Leiter, Painted Nude Courtesy of the Saul Leiter
Foundation and Sylph Editions
As someone who is familiar with his street
photography oeuvre, I found the results for this fresh body of work to be surprising. There are shades of Klimt in the ornate
eroticism of some works, and of vintage
50s pin-ups in the faux-coyness of others. Often, only an outline of a
figure remains from the original photograph; the face, body and backdrop are
covered with splashes and strokes of vivid colour – bright yellows, oranges and
pinks, browns and reds.
Unlike the soft poetry of his colour photographs, Leiter’s
painted nudes are all about energy and vitality. They turn monochrome into a
riot of colour, almost obliterating all trace of the medium for which he is now
most celebrated. Perhaps more importantly, though, they cast new light on his
beautifully evocative, almost abstract colour photographs of New York.
Leiter imbued street photography – the images for which he
is known were all taken within a few blocks of his East Village apartment –
with a painter’s instinct for composition and tone. The clamorous streets of
Manhattan were transformed in his intimate observations of passers-by glimpsed
through the rain-splashed or steamy
windows of diners and shops. What emerged was a New York of the
imagination: blurred or brightly
coloured, and glowing with a magical light of the neon beauty of the
nocturnal city streets.
    Saul Leiter, Painted Nude Courtesy of the Saul Leiter
Foundation and Sylph Editions
As well as his visions of the city, Leiter also shot hundreds
of intensely intimate nudes including many of his lover, companion and friend,
Soames Bantry. No one quite knows when but at some point he returned to
this stack of unseen work and began to paint, daubing them, splashing them with
vigorous, untamed planes of colour; cultivating vibrant, technicolour mermaids
from quietly monochrome figures. The paint is applied with energy and
sensuality, sculpting and clothing the women, returning them to the life
that the black and white film has stripped them of.
 Saul Leiter, Painted Nude Courtesy of the Saul Leiter
Foundation and Sylph Editions
"I like it when one is not certain what one sees,"
Leiter said, and there is a wonderful enigma to be found here. The photographs
were taken at moments of extreme intimacy, featuring women in the throes of
personal pleasure, and the act of painting over them could be seen as a form of
concealment. Yet Leiter’s brush acts as illumination, rather than censorship,
creating a riot of colour that heightens the beauty of these private moments,
creating contemplation rather than mess. They speak to Leiter’s love of colour
at a time when it was still deemed inferior, clumsy even, in comparison to
black and white. And they preserve the mystery that was at the heart of him as
an artist and as a man. “There are the things that are out in the open and then
there are the things that are hidden,” he said, “and life...the real world has
more to do with what’s hidden, maybe. Don’t you think?”
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Saul Leiter, Painted Nude Courtesy of the Saul Leiter
Foundation and Sylph Editions
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