shashasha

After Saul Leiter’s passing away aged 89 in 2013, he left behind two apartments in New York’s East Village filled with photographs and art created during his long, productive life. Among them were thousands and thousands of printed nude photographs of women, most of them taken between the 1940s and the 1980s, never before exhibited or shown.

“Leiter was a bit of a homebody, and his observations often convey the stillness and quiet of an ordinary afternoon at home. You can smell the cigarette smoke, hear the classical music playing on the radio. The women in these pictures look comfortable, sometimes sleepy, in their (usually quite natural) poses. The bedsheets are inviting indeed”, writes Michael Parillo from the Leiter Foundation in his extensive closing essay.

In addition to the many fascinating photographs, including triptychs and portrait-like nudes, the book also includes a few of Leiter’s painted nudes.