Chronology

1923 Born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, December 3. Parents are Wolf Leiter (born Poland) and Regina née Goldberg (born Austria).

1930–31 Lives temporarily in Vienna with mother and siblings, staying with maternal aunt. Family travels to Poland to visit father’s relations before returning to Pittsburgh.

1936 Kodachrome color film for 35mm cameras is debuted.

1937 (circa) Anscochrome color film for 35mm cameras is debuted.

1938 Leiter attends Talmudical Academy in New York City. Begins to paint and draw.

1939 (circa) Leiter is given a Detrola camera by his mother and begins photographing in black and white.

1940s Ektachrome color film for 35mm cameras is debuted.

1941 Leiter enrolls at the University of Pittsburgh and attends classes for one semester.

1942 (circa) Attends Telshe Yeshiva Rabbinical College, Cleveland, but drops out and moves back to his parents’ home in Pittsburgh.

1945 Paintings exhibited at Ten-Thirty Gallery, Cleveland; Outlines Gallery, Pittsburgh; Gump’s department store, San Francisco; and Arts and Crafts Center, Pittsburgh.

1946 Paintings exhibited in New Year Show at Butler Art Institute, Ohio. Moves permanently to New York City. Resides on Perry Street, Greenwich Village (1946-1952). Befriends Abstract Expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart, who encourages Leiter’s early photographic experiments. 

1947 Attends Henri Cartier-Bresson’s exhibition at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. One of Leiter’s paintings is included in Abstract and Surrealist American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Befriends W. Eugene Smith, who gives him Alexey Brodovitch’s book Ballet. Paintings exhibited at Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio. 

1948 (circa) Begins working with color slide film, including Kodachrome and Anscochrome. Works primarily with three cameras, Argus C3, Auto Graflex Junior, and early Rolleiflex.

1951 Life publishes Leiter’s black-and-white series The Wedding as a Funeral, September 3 issue, and Shoes of the Shoeshine Man, November 26 issue.

1952 Moves to New York City’s East Village. Cooperative Tanager Gallery is founded; Leiter works in studio behind gallery. Exhibits drawings in a group show at Tanager.

1953 Black-and-white photographs are included in Always the Young Strangers, curated by Edward Steichen, at MoMA and in The Exhibition of Contemporary Photography: Japan and America at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Tanager Gallery relocates to East Tenth Street; Leiter rents a studio space behind the gallery.

1954 Marries Barbara Hatch. Exhibits color work in Emerging Talent group show, selected by art critic Clement Greenberg, at Kootz Gallery, New York. Primarily uses newly launched Leica M3 camera during this period.

1955 Solo exhibition Saul Leiter: Gouaches and Color Slides at Tanager Gallery. Around this time Leiter gives a slide talk about his color work at the Club, an East Village art space.

1956 Work shown in Painters Sculptors on 10th Street at Tanager Gallery. 

1957 Steichen includes twenty of Leiter’s color photographs in his slide talk “Experimental Photography in Color” at MoMA. Henry Wolf, art director at Esquire, publishes Leiter’s fashion photographs. 

1958 Begins to photograph for Harper’s Bazaar when Henry Wolf becomes art director. Three color prints are included in Photographs from the Museum Collection at MoMA.

1959 Travels in Europe and photographs Gina Lollobrigida in Madrid for Esquire during the making of the film Solomon and Sheba. Photographs for the cover of Camera. Included in exhibition Photographer’s Choice exhibition, along with Garry Winogrand and others, at Workshop Gallery, New York. Separates from wife Barbara Hatch.

1960-62 (circa) Photographs in Harlem for Esquire, with a selection of images published in July 1960 issue alongside James Baldwin’s essay “Fifth Avenue, Uptown.” Rents studio space from fashion photographer John Rawlings. Begins relationship with model Soames Bantry, who moves into Leiter’s East Tenth Street apartment building.

1962 Ernst Haas: Color Photography opens at the Museum of Modern Art.

1963 Leiter work is included in the group show Photography 63: An International Exhibition at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. Establishes commercial studio at 156 Fifth Avenue, in the Flatiron District. Travels with Bantry to Ireland to shoot Harper’s Bazaar feature “The Look of the Irish” for October 1963 issue, which also includes a Leiter cover image and photographs of children’s fashion in New York.

1960s-1970s Continues to take fashion photographs and do other commercial work for magazines including Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Show, British Vogue, Queen, and Nova. Photographs are also included in Life, U.S. Camera, Photography Annual, and Infinity magazines. Travels on assignment to Mexico, France, England, Ireland, Italy, and Israel. Often uses Leica M4 for commercial work in the 1970s; for street photography uses Leica CL, Minox 35 EL, and Canon A-1 and AE-1, among other models.

1976 Photographs by William Eggleston at MoMA shows the artist’s color work.

1979 Leiter receives funding from Mobil Artists in Residence Program to work in North Sea region, photographing an oil platform and coastal communities.

1981 Closes commercial studio at 156 Fifth Avenue due to financial difficulties but continues doing commercial fashion work, largely for advertising campaigns.

1987 Included in History of Photography series of Fotofolio postcards.

1989 Publishes black-and-white series Six for fashion company Comme des Garçons.

1991 Fashion work included in group exhibition Appearances at Victoria and Albert Museum, London, with accompanying book by Martin Harrison.

1992 Black-and-white work included in Jane Livingston’s book The New York School: Photographs 1936–1963.

1993 Black-and-white photographs shown in Leiter’s first exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. Leiter receives funding from Ilford Paper Company to begin printing 35mm color slides as Ilfochromes with Laumont Editions in New York.

1994 Black-and-white photographs exhibited at Howard Greenberg Gallery.

1997 Color photographs exhibited at Howard Greenberg Gallery.

2002 Gives talk at Jewish Museum, New York, for New York: Capital of Photography exhibition, curated by Max Kozloff. Soames Bantry dies on October 9.

2003 Leiter receives a grant of $10,000 from Olympus along with his first digital camera, an Olympus E-1. He proceeds to purchase many digital cameras in the coming years, including Leica and Lumix models.

2004 Signs contract with Steidl for book of color photographs.

2005 Exhibition Saul Leiter: Early Color at Howard Greenberg Gallery.

2006 Leiter’s first monograph, Early Color, is published by Steidl. Exhibition Saul Leiter: Early Color at Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp. Leiter attends opening of his first solo museum exhibition, In Living Color, at Milwaukee Art Museum, and gives talk. Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), and Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Fort Worth, Texas) add Leiter works to their permanent collections.

2007 Metropolitan Transportation Authority displays eight Duratrans color images by Leiter at Sixth Avenue & Forty-Second Street subway station, New York.

2008 First solo museum show in Europe, Saul Leiter, at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, with accompanying book by Steidl. Gives talk and slide presentation at Museum of Jewish Art and History, Paris.

2009 First painting exhibition in over 30 years, at Knoedler Gallery, New York. Tomas Leach begins filming documentary In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter.

2010 Travels to Berlin to give talk and slide show at C/O Berlin, in conjunction with Photography Days festival.

2011 Exhibition Early Color at Musée de l’Élysée (Photo Élysée) in Lausanne, Switzerland, with accompanying book Colors published by Idpure Éditions. Exhibition Photographs and Works on Paper at Gallery Fifty One, with accompanying book.

2012 Attends Saul Leiter: Retrospektive exhibition at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany; accompanying book is published by Kehrer. Also attends solo exhibition at Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, and is interviewed on stage.

2013 Interviewed on stage by Vince Aletti at School of Visual Arts, New York. In No Great Hurry premieres in New York. Here’s More, Why Not is published by Fifty One Publications. Saul Leiter dies November 26 at his home of 60 years in New York’s East Village. Leiter’s photograph Package (c. 1960) is the cover image for New York magazine’s “Reasons to Love New York” issue, December 23-30.

2014 Saul Leiter Foundation is founded in New York by Margit Erb. Early Black & White is published by Steidl.

2015 Painted Nudes is published by Sylph Editions, London. The New Yorker publishes six-page Leiter portfolio in March 9 issue. In No Great Hurry premieres in Tokyo.

2016 Exhibitions Saul Leiter: Retrospective, at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, and Saul Leiter, at the Fotomuseum (FOMU), Antwerp.

2017 Photographer Saul Leiter: A Retrospective, Leiter’s first solo exhibition in Japan, opens at Tokyo’s Bunkamura Museum of Art, with accompanying book, All About Saul Leiter, published by Seigensha. The exhibition travels in Japan for the next two years.

2018 Saul Leiter: In Search of Beauty opens at Foto Colectania in Barcelona and travels to Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, Spain. Saul Leiter/David Lynch/Helmut Newton: Nudes opens at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin. The books In My Room (Steidl) and Women (Space Shower) are released, along with Spanish, French, Korean, and North American editions of All About Saul Leiter. The Saul Leiter Foundation begins examining and cataloging Leiter’s archive of color slides.

2019 Leiter’s paintings and personal effects are displayed in the group exhibition A Specific Eye: Seven Collections at Demisch Danant, New York. The nudes exhibition Saul Leiter: East 10th Street, with a book by the same name, opens at Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp. Two small shows are mounted in Japan, Saul Leiter: Lanesville, 1958 at Leica Gallery Tokyo and Saul Leiter: Nude at Leica Gallery Kyoto.

2020 Forever Saul Leiter opens at the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo, with accompanying book by Shogakukan. When the coronavirus pandemic closes museums and galleries, two online exhibitions are launched, Saul Leiter: Discoveries from the Slide Archive at 28VignonStreet.com and The World Is Full of Endless Things: Saul Leiter’s New York at HowardGreenbergGallery.com.

2021 Exhibition Saul Leiter: Through the Blurry Window opens at Piknic in Seoul, South Korea. Forever Saul Leiter travels in Japan.

2022 Thames & Hudson publishes The Unseen Saul Leiter, featuring newly discovered work from Leiter’s slide archive. Photographs from Florence and Damien Bachelot’s collection are shown at Villa Medici, Rome.

2023 Saul Leiter: Assemblages, including photographs and paintings, opens in Arles, France, during Rencontres d’Arles festival. Saul Leiter: Origins in Color, hosted by the Bunkamura Museum of Art, opens at Shibuya Hikarie Hall in Tokyo.