>>3800528>Dismissing a whole body work by single photograph I am surprised that we are still stuck in early 20th century meaningless debates.
Look there are certain motifs and metaphors that every artist likes to work with. Common motifs in Leiter's photography are drops on wet window, snow, rain, umbrella, foggy glass, winters etc. He was obsessed with the beauty. Beauty is harmony among parts. When you aim for harmony the subject matter becomes irrelevant because it is just a pointer towards something which lies inside us. In that photograph the photographer is on a walk in the rain. That orange in the top, the reflection on the ground that bokeh in the background are stuck in a unity which is beautiful. Where Saul Leiter shines is that how he uses those "accidents" for his advantage. Without his umbrella the whole photograph would fall apart. An amateur photographer would have dismissed the umbrella because it is causing "hindrance" but upon further investigation this isn't the case at all. By destroying the old methods he liberates his vision by the introduction of failures. This is where the true art lies, working with failures and limitations. Pre-destined paths of how a good should or should not be are totally boring and repetitive.
These shots looks very ordinary to you but thing is you have never thought about capturing it in 1950s in the first place when people use think that colour is amateur. People keep missing the context of time. Today Beatles albums would have been totally meaningless today because the artistic conversation have moved on.
So please study photography and spend more time looking at these photographs. Social media have fucked our attention spans. Don't dismiss it just by look at google images. If you can't afford a photobook then download these images and study them for sometime. Then go out and try to see these images in your surroundings. These little moments of extreme harmony are hidden within the banality of grandiosity
