Saul Leiter: In My Room

This hardcover 8 x 8 book is well made. The semi-gloss print quality is excellent and the pages have nice weight and thickness. The photos are mostly 4 x 6 with a few 5 x 5's.It took a few days for some of these photographs to grow on me. My last purchase in this genre - Vincent Peters amazing "Personal" work - is very different. Both are beautiful works of art.Where Peters controls every last detail regarding his idyllic sets, the perfectly flattering poses, & the precise fall of light, Leiter seemingly controls much less in comparison. I doubt that Saul gives much thought to straightening a bed sheet, or adding / removing a cup, an ashtray, a book, a notepad, or a newspaper in his frame before releasing the shutter. Whatever is or isn't there in that moment makes the cut. The results are authentic, day in the life captures of his lovely muses.One of the great things about IMR (and In No Great Hurry film) is the unobstructed view of how Saul lived and worked. It's a beautiful mess dripping with the context of an artist in perpetual creative mode. He doesn't mind a little peeling plaster, or dirt around the baseboards... he's obviously consumed elsewhere.Saul's models here - personal friends, companions, and/ or lovers - all seem relaxed, unrehearsed, and wholly themselves. Whether just waking up, lounging around the house, getting (un)dressed, getting ready to go out... almost every shot feels candid. Page 21 is an exceptional masterpiece.In My Room does have some traditional posed shots, but none seem meticulously planned beyond good light at the right place / time of day.Saul has an incredible gift for framing, composition, and using light. This work is no exception. His inventive inclusion of reflections, frames within frames, dramatic dof, and the like are remarkable and inspiring. If you're a Leiter fan, add this to your collection in a great hurry. You won't be disappointed.

One of my favorite photo books. The photos are genuine and authentic. They show passion in his relationships and have amazing compositions.

This is a superb book of portraiture. Saul Leiter had a refined, rarified way of seeing that appears, at times, deceptively simple. Especially noteworthy, in my opinion, is the interplay in certain photos between out of focus areas and in focus areas, between mirrors and women. What also makes this book special is the fact that these photos are, in fact, scans of photos that Saul Leiter actually developed and printed in his own lab. So what we are seeing here are these photos the way that Saul Leiter wanted them to appear.

It's interesting to see this kind of work from a master of composition and light, it's another dimension of a great artist, not disappointed at all

I know the works of this photographer and was surprised to see this poorly prepared book. The order of photographs has no logic, the are photographs that generally repeat the others. Printing has low quality. Usually Saul Leiter didn't do much to his films. All the processing was done by those who printed them. In this case printing and digitizing of photographs was poorly done.

Wonderful artist/photographer, wonderful book. Beautiful photos.

great

I find this book very personal and inspirational through a life of himself that he showed here. Through these photos you can really tell how he lived and how his relationship with others went, quietly, emotionally, but beautifully, I suppose.

Like other reviewers, I order this along time ago and got fed up waiting, so I cancelled it but purchased it recently. Was it worth waiting, yes I would say so.Carole Naggar, a regular contributor to Aperture and a photography historian, narrates the book. Her essay is very well written, very expressive and really does immerse you in Saul Leiter’s world, probably better than he ever could. Nice writing.Leiter was friends with a number of famous photographers and artists such as Eugene W Smith, Diane Arbus & Andy Warhol and his work reflects these friendships. Very in your face, documentary style with little or no posing. Furthermore he was influenced by Egan Schiele’s drawings of nudes. Leiter’s images are erotic, and intimate. In many instances I can see images which are very similar to paintings by Lucien Freud. He photographs what he sees like Freud painted what he saw, warts and all. There are body creases, unruly poses and not so attractive women in the state of nudity or partial undress. Saul Leiter’s photographic eye had few barriers.The black & white images look un-posed and voyeuristic. But they are erotic, taken with feeling and exposing the sexual side of the women in the images. The women, indeed, seem unaware of Leiter’s camera. That’s the way the images should be. Raw. These are not images of women like you would see in the men’s magazines of the age, Playboy and Men Only, these are close up intimate portrayal of lovers, wives and girlfriends. These are like ‘fly-on-the-wall’ images taken without notice. Seems like the women do not know he is there or don’t care. It works.There are several images, which intrigue me. Page 79, has a naked woman standing on a toilet seat, quite precariously, lighting her cigarette. Not a favoured pose of photographers and one I have never tried or intend to try. In fact, that image is also commented on by Robert Benton in an afterword to the rear of the book.All the images show the models to be at ease, which suggests these are not posed photographs but rather images taken over a period where relaxation and familiarization with the camera was paramount. They must have taken hours to take, to make each woman at ease and not be intimidated by Leiter’s camera.By the end of the book, which is neither a long read or having an enormous amount of images, I get a feeling of Francesca Woodman style photography, though hers were mostly nude self-portraits. I assume neither Leiter knew Woodman or Woodman, Leiter and certainly these images were not available to be seen in Woodman’s time, but the images really do echo each other's styles.I enjoyed the book and it was well worth waiting for.

Leiter is known for his painterly and abstract colour street photography. This is black and white and studio/room based but still exhibits the same fractured narrative style of vision. I don't find it quite as interesting as his colour work (which to be fair is probably my favourite of any photography) but this is still worth buying. A good quality Steidl book using decent paper that gives good image rendition. There is an interesting essay too.

Ordered 21-Feb-2016, arrived 21-Jun-2018, talk about delayed gratification! Well, at least it gave me the chance to save up for it at 89 pence per month. I already have "Early Color" and "Early Black & White" - also ordered in February 2016, but delivered that same month - so this is a welcome addition to the 'set'. I'm very happy and very pleased with it, well worth both the money and the wait.

Molt satisfet de la compra.El llibre correctament embolicat i en perfectes condicions. Com acabat de treure de la prestatgeria de la llibreria.Entrega perfecte i dins del termini establert.

Entrega demorada, mas dentro do prazo e produto conforme previsto. muito bom.