Fragments of Solitude

Like some of today's gadget geeks, photographer Saul Leiter was an early adopter, taking up color film and mastering it before almost anyone else. His rich, subdued hues and fragmented compositions recall old-world painters. But his scenes are mostly of the contemporary and the urban: people, usually alone, glimpsed in a bus or café or implied by umbrellas or a single foot—the visual equivalent of an overheard comment you can't quite make out. The pictures speak in another way too, through the signage of the city: HAIRCUT … PIZZA … PUBLIC TELEPHONE. Nearly unknown for decades, Leiter's work has just been published in a compilation from Steidl, Saul Leiter: Early Color. New York's Howard Greenberg Gallery is showing Leiter's work through January 21, 2007, and another exhibition opens in September at the Milwaukee Art Museum. —JOHN BRANCH