SAUL LEITER: RETROSPEKTIVE: THE KEHRER VERLAG MONOGRAPH

Berlin, Germany: Kehrer Heidelberg Berlin, 2012. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. Berlin, Germany: Kehrer Heidelberg Berlin, 2012. Hardcover. As New/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 296 pages. Retrospective Monograph. The single most valuable book on the photographic art and achievement of Saul Leiter ever published. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, including its Facsimile Reissued Edition, which was released as a memorial tribute after Saul Leiter died the following year, on November 23, 2013. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out upon publication. The First Edition is now rare. A brilliant production by Kehrer Verlag: Oversize-volume format. Red cloth boards with black titles embossed on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Saul Leiter. Essays by various contributors. Pictorial slipcase. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated (for the images) and uncoated (for the text) stock paper in Germany to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is outstanding in every respect. Without DJ, as issued. Presents, in its First Edition format, "Saul Leiter: Retrospektive". The definitive retrospective on the greatest photographic re-discovery of our time. "Nearly 40 years went by before his extraordinary photography was re-discovered" (Publisher's blurb). That is not at all surprising because Saul Leiter gave street photography a fresh, new look that differed from ALL of the other great street photographers of his - and our - time. Instead of the gritty, hard-edged, "in-your-face" imagery of Garry Winogrand (or Martin Parr today), Leiter's "look" is melancholy, ephemeral, and lyrical, deploying a consistently understated palette to convey some of the most sublime images of The Street we will ever see. Saul Leiter understood that photography is the exact opposite of painting (because he was good at both) : Painting is about a "vision" that one realizes on canvas. Photography is about developing and mastering a "look" - by taking thousands of photographs, even if or because one is Saul Leiter - that somehow becomes identifiably and uniquely one's own. Precisely because anyone can take photographs, a distinctive look is much harder, if not altogether impossible, to achieve than one thinks for most practicing photographers, who must inevitably fall back on the established look of a particular genre, whether it's portraiture, street photography, or the nude. The one great contribution of photography is to re-define the visual arts through its "look" aesthetics instead of through "vision", the counter-productive and exhausted idea it inherited from painting. Instead, Saul Leiter - and the truly great photographers such as Avedon, on the one hand, and Robert Frank, on the other - found and perfected a look that is uniquely theirs, and theirs alone, which all other (derivative) photographers imitate at their peril. An absolute "must-have" title for Saul Leiter collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Saul Leiter. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great art photography book. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. Lavishly illustrated with plates. One of the greatest photographers of the 20th century and our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SAUL LEITER TITLE IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 3868282580.