American photographer Saul Leiter (1923 – 2013), one of the most important practitioners of the post-war period and a pioneer of colour photography, celebrated for his evocative images of New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, will be the subject of a major survey at MK Gallery opening 17 February 2024.

Leiter photographed every day for sixty years, keenly observing daily life and discovering beauty on the streets of the East Village neighbourhood where he lived his entire adult life and which became his enduring subject. Upon his death in 2013, Leiter left behind a remarkable collection of around 15,000 black and white prints, at least 40,000 colour slides, a similar number of black and white negatives and over 4000 paintings, only a handful of which had seen the light of day. Once lost to obscurity, his work has since been rediscovered and revaluated for its ground-breaking role in the emergence of colour photography.

Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World at MK Gallery will be the largest exhibition of Leiter’s work to take place in the UK, featuring 171 photographs alongside a selection of over 40 of Leiter’s lesser-known paintings.

The exhibition at MK Gallery is curated by Anne Morin, co-produced by the Rencontres d’Arles and DiChroma Photography, Madrid with the collaboration of the Saul Leiter Foundation, New York.