nowadays his photography is acclaimed by film directors and museum curators. So why were Leiter’s poetic images of recent York ignored by the art world for decades?Near the halt of In No Great Hurry,a 2014 documentary about Saul Leiter, we see the 88-year-archaic photographer kicking back in his chair, or illuminated by cool recent York light. “I may be archaic-fashioned,” he says slowly. “But I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty – a delight in the kind things in the world. And I don’t think one should have to apologise for it.”Beauty and delight are not nouns one associates with recent York street photography, a tough-edged genre popularised by the combative monochromes of Garry Winogrand and the flamboyant grotesques sought out by Diane Arbus. The Gotham of glass and grime, or of hustle and raw noise,has gifted many things to photographic history, but bare aesthetic pleasure has rarely been among them.
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Source: theguardian.com