Saul Leiter Analysis.

Saul Leiter was an American photographer and painter from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania whose work focuses a lot on documenting various landscapes and societies in New York as well as the human impact on these landscapes and the effects that we may have on our society, using the formal elements of lighting, tones, colours and compositions. For this artist analysis, I will be specifically looking at his street and landscape photography series in response to the theme of 'Society' for this project. I decided to document and research the work of Saul Leiter in relation to this theme as I intend to take a series of photographs that document the urban society that I live in and around - such as Croydon, Kingston, London and Bromley - and the impact that we have on our society such as graffiti, street art, construction and homelessness and the general lack of care that we show our society and the environments that we live in. This is something I felt inspired by whilst researching and analysing the work of Saul Leiter as I really like the gritty style that his photographs have through the documentation of the cityscapes and buildings around him and the way he highlights specific elements or areas of the photographs through his use of composition, lighting, colour and tones which could help influence an editing style that I could take inspiration from and reference within my own photographic responses to this project and theme.

Many of Saul Leiter's photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds with a range of long-
distance, closeups and mid-shot compositional angles in order to document the urban landscapes and the impact that we have on our society. Despite Saul Leiter's photographs being based around the theme of landscape and street photography he tends to capture a lot of his imagery in the portraiture camera angle which I feel helps give his photographs the sense that the landscapes and street photography are very claustrophobic and gritty areas which is also emphasized by his use of the formal elements of tone, colour and lighting.

A lot of the landscapes that Saul Leiter has taken in order to create his projects are based around various urban landscapes and street environments that make up the society that he is documenting within his work. He often focuses a lot of his landscape and street photographic work on the uses of the formal elements of lighting, colour, tones as well as the composition of the photograph itself in order to emphasize specific areas of focus within his imagery whilst also making the street and landscapes feel more gritty and claustrophobic through his photo editing techniques and lighting, whilst also creating a

leading line of focus within his photography. This is something that I could potentially take inspiration from within my own landscape photographic work responding to the theme of 'Society' by documenting photographs of the urban society and using different tones, colours, lighting and compositions to highlight a specific element or section of the landscape or street that I will be documenting within my photographs to emphasize a theme of grittiness and claustrophobia of city life.

Within my own photographic response I have decided to take a series of landscape and street photographs that will document the theme of 'Society' by photographing the different urban environments of Croydon, Kingston, London and Bromley and the damages and lack of care that humans have for their own society within my photographs, focusing on the grit and grime that the city and town landscapes may have such as graffiti, street art, homelessness and damages to buildings and the like as well as the changes that we are often making to our own society such as construction sites and the demolishment of buildings.