SAUL LEITER IN STILLNESS

Yumiko Izu
SAUL LEITER IN STILLNESS

Photographs: Yumiko Izu

Text: Pauline Vermare & Yumiko Izu

Publisher: Libro Arte

120 pages

Pictures: 63

Year: 2020

ISBN: 978-4-904541-28-9

Comments: Illustrated hardcover. First edition. Japanese paper on title page. Plenty of full color bleed pictures beautifully printed on heavy paper.

I met Saul Leiter for the first time in the kitchen at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. He invited me to his home, and as a great admirer of his work, I gladly accepted. I didn’t know yet that I would visit his enchanting and creative space many times over.

When I visited Saul’s apartment in the East Village, it was a magical experience. We talked about art projects, current affairs, old Japanese woodblock prints, and cats. The conversation was full of humor, laughter, and inspiration. A gentle glance with a smile, the scent of coffee, and the room always overflowing with the light from the sky. I always found myself drawn to the tall glass windows and cracked plaster walls which embodied the passage of time.

Saul moved to East 10th Street in 1952, and for more than four decades he and his companion Soames Bantry shared a life of art. Saul died at home peacefully on November 26, 2013, at the age of 89. Three weeks after Saul’s death, I was granted permission by Margit Erb, the director of the Saul Leiter Foundation, to photograph the inspirational interior of his apartments. Apartments No. 4 and No. 15 were filled with a profound silence, yet I felt his spirit in the air and in the objects he left behind. There were painting tools by the large window, cameras in the cabinet, a hat and scarf on his favorite chair. It seemed that they were waiting for their owner to come back. Today, apartment No. 15 remains as the headquarters of the Saul Leiter Foundation.

Five years later, the foundation permitted me to return and continue photographing Saul’s belongings. He left a myriad of photographs, paintings, watercolors, sketchbooks, cameras, undeveloped film, color slides, watches, letters, poems, books, religious items from his father’s archive, little straw brushes, and keys. Saul’s objects tell us about his life as an artist. They reveal his deep love for Soames and his complex relationship with his parents and his sister.

Saul Leiter: In Stillness helps to tell Saul’s story by depicting the interior and exterior of his living and working spaces in the East Village. Within a few blocks of his home, he found beauty all around him, bringing to life his belief that “mysterious things happen in familiar places.” It is my hope that the world will discover another facet of Saul Leiter through my work.

Yumiko Izu