Saul Leiter
[Photographer, b. 1923, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, New York.]
I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera.
Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.
If I’d only known which [photographs] would be very good and liked, I wouldn’t have had to do all the thousands of others.
In order to build a career and to be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music and to paint when I feel like it.
I go out to take a walk, I see something, I take a picture. I take photographs. I have avoided profound explanations of what I do.
I admired a tremendous number of photographers, but for some reason I arrived at a point of view of my own.
Seeing is a neglected enterprise.
When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.
