Saul Leiter’s ‘An Unfinished World’ at FOAM Museum in Amsterdam

The quiet poetry of everyday life through Leiter’s lens.

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Walking through Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World at FOAM in Amsterdam felt like stepping into a living painting—one where the boundaries between photography and art dissolve into something fluid and deeply personal. I felt like I was stepping into a quiet, rain-soaked street in New York, where the soft glow of neon signs reflects on wet pavement, and life moves just a little slower. Saul Leiter’s photographs have that effect – they pull you into a world that feels familiar yet dreamlike, full of muted colors, layered compositions, and fleeting moments of beauty. Leiter’s world isn’t just one of images; it’s a realm of texture, mood, and fleeting poetry, capturing the delicate dance of city life with a tenderness that is rare in street photography.

Selfportrait, 1950s © Saul Leiter Foundation

Saul Leiter was never one for grand statements or dramatic storytelling. Instead, he found poetry in the everyday – a fogged-up window, a shadow slipping across a wall, a figure half-hidden behind a red umbrella. Leiter’s New York is a place of dreamlike abstraction, where rain blurs neon lights into watercolor stains, and figures slip in and out of focus like half-remembered ghosts. His use of color—at a time when black and white dominated fine art photography—wasn’t just bold; it was revolutionary. Looking at his work, one doesn’t simply see a red umbrella or the soft glow of a yellow taxi, but rather, one feels them. His colors are never garish; they hum, they whisper, they gently pull you into a world that is both intimately familiar and quietly surreal.

This exhibition at FOAM offers more than just a retrospective of his career—it’s an invitation into his way of seeing. Leiter, who arrived in New York in 1946, spent decades wandering the city, camera in hand, capturing its quiet moments of grace. He wasn’t interested in spectacle or drama. Instead, his lens found beauty in the overlooked: a woman caught in a moment of introspection, a fogged-up window obscuring a passerby, the geometric interplay of shadows and signs.