Digital Video Magazine — December 13, 2019
‘In No Great Hurry’: Documenting the Work and Wisdom of Photographer Saul Leiter

Tomas Leach’s documentary In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter is a tender and intimate portrait of the photographer and painter considered to be a pioneer—along with Diane Arbus and Robert Frank—of the New York School era of photography of the 1940s and ’50s.

Leiter could have been lauded as the pioneer of the artistic use of color film but was never driven by the lure of success. Instead, he preferred to “drink coffee and photograph in his own way,” according to the film’s synopsis, amassing an archive of beautiful work piled high in his New York apartment. Leiter came to acclaim late in life. While much of his most powerful work was made in the 1950s, it wasn’t truly rediscovered until nearly a half-century later.

Leach, who initially learned of Leiter’s work through a 2006 monograph, “Early Color,” reached out to the photographer’s gallery and was eventually put in touch with the man himself. “Looking at the images, I was just blown away by how beautiful and fresh they were,” the filmmaker says.

Following a year of meetings at the photographer’s East Village apartment, Leiter finally agreed to participate in a film, albeit with several provisions. “Some of his stipulations were that it could only be me and him, so there was no crew, and that there be no third-party involvement, so there wouldn’t be any kind of backers or commissioners telling us when we had to be done by or what the film had to focus on,” Leach recalls. (Read full story…)