REVIEW: Saul Leiter, ‘Early Black and White’

After some searching and some digging, I finally earned my copy of Saul Leiter’s posthumous new collection, Early Black and White.

It’s the follow up to Steidl’s popular (and delightful) Early Color monograph, which has gone through five editions since 2007. The Black and White series comes in two books, “Interior” and “Exterior.”

Saul Leiter self portrait

You can learn more about Leiter’s biography and style influences from Photo-Eye and Faded+Blurred, but suffice it to say that Leiter’s work, especially his color work, is a recent discovery in the art world. Now we get to see more of his monochromatic work.

The two-book package is nice. The slip cover is a little flimsy, but the books’ paper and quality and top-notch. Often I felt like the photos could’ve been a little larger – some of them scream to be printed 8×10″ on the page. But Early Black and White’s size matches that of Early Color, so at least it’s consistent.

Something I noticed: “Interior” doesn’t necessarily mean just photos that Leiter took indoors. No, “Interior” seems to represent Leiter’s relationships – inside his personal life, with family, friends, and kids. There are photos of relations on the streets, on walks and on rooftops.

Similarly, “Exterior” is outward-looking: strangers, city scenes, classic candid street photography. This is the classic Leiter we’re familiar with from his color work, with reflections, windows, and slanted glances of strangers throughout the book.

There are pieces of both books that I appreciate, but the “Exterior” edition recalls the Leiter that inspires me. There are a lot of photos in “Interior” that seem simple snapshots of friends at parties. I wouldn’t dare argue that these are outside of “art,” but they aren’t as moving. Sometimes they feel like filler.

There are exceptions. In many cases, Leiter makes art of of photos of friends and lovers, as above.

It’s the “Exterior” stuff that shows what Leiter can do, even if it’s not the color stuff that made him famous.

And on that, I will say that, while his monochrome work is delightful, you start to miss Leiter-in-color as you pour through each book. He makes the black and white tones do a lot of work, but they’re not as poetic as those early color photographs.

Leiter’s collection of work still surpasses most street photographers. His way of seeing the world is truly unique, and poetic, and over the course of several books his subject matter becomes truly his. Umbrellas, windows, weather, pedestrians – everyday stuff, illuminated.

Lately, I’ve devoured photography books from the masters, and out of all of those Leiter’s work (and perhaps William Eggleston’s) speaks to me the most.

I hope that these Early books are the just the beginning of the publication of Leiter’s work. The essayists hint that he always had a camera on him. It would be great to see how Leiter, through his camera lens, saw ‘80s, ’90s, and 2000s

A note on purchasing

It’s tough to figure out how to buy this book series. You can’t purchase it directly from Steidl’s website, and the Amazon listing is a series of third-party book sellers.

I found my copy through the Book Depository, a UK outfit, even though it’s perpetually out of stock. The site does offer a nice “email me when it’s in stock” option, though it took me a few tries to hit the “add to cart” button in time.

But the books arrived quickly and at a decent price, and delivery is free. So you may have some luck in finding a copy.


On Processing Photos

I almost wrote “editing” instead of processing, because sometimes I still think of “editing photos” meaning: correcting, cropping, etc.

But that’s semantics. What I really mean is, I give my photos a certain look, and this is how I do it.

To illustrate, I’m going to use a senior portrait shoot from last summer.

This is Kaitlyn.

Senior Portraits: Kaitlyn

Kaitlyn and I worked together on a hot summer evening around the college where I work. In all, we hit up an abandoned Catholic church, a wooded seating area, the football field, and the college’s nature center.

Let’s start with the out-of-camera raw file, and work our way toward the finished product.

Here’s a sample of a raw photo file from the shoot. It’s important to get lighting and composition down first, of course. Here, things look okay. But we’re just getting started.

To start, I play with a few VSCO film emulations I like, usually in the Kodak Portra family. In this case, it’s Portra 400 VC.

I like my photos to have lots of contrast, so I bump that in Lightroom. Nothing crazy, but usually in the 20-50 range. This deepens the shadows and make the colors stand out a bit.

Next, I tweak the highlights and shadows if I need to. I’d rather have more details in the shadows and then darken them with contrast. This photo was a little on the light side, so I dropped the highlights slider in Lightroom to bring more detail back into the face.

If it’s appropriate, I’ll boost the vibrance a bit to help the colors stand out.

I don’t always add a vignette, but in the case of strong center-point portraits like Kaitlyn’s, I think a bit of vignetting adds some focus.

To finish up a portrait, I’ll darken the hair around the face, lighten any dark spots under the eyes, and add emphasis to the contours of the face. If needed, I’ll pull the photo into Photoshop and clean up stray hairs here and there.

Here’s the finished product, before and after:

That’s basically it. Tone, contrast, and some clean-up work are the big three. There may be some cropping involved, too, or taking out distracting background elements. But I can get a lot done using these basic techniques.

Here are a few other samples from the photo shoot, with before and after images.

See the full set from Kaitlyn’s shoot. You can also hire me to do your portrait shoot.


Real Film Border Scans

A nifty option: real film border scans, courtesy of RW Boyer. He has some other options coming down the pipeline as well, from the sounds of it, so stay tuned.

Added a bit of faux grain in Photoshop and used a probably-too-sharp-for-film image off the Fuji X-E1. Note, also, that’s using Fuji’s in-camera B&W filter and shooting a JPG out. So more Fujifilm than Kodak. But oh well.

Thanks RB!