Saul Leiter, Snow, 1970. Saul Leiter / Saul Leiter Foundation. Image source
There is a perfectly good photograph somewhere behind this window. A person in a dark coat, a yellow vehicle, snow. A helpful instinct might suggest wiping the glass.
Fortunately, Saul Leiter didn’t oblige. In Snow, from 1970, the condensation stays. Water runs down the pane, lettering crosses the lower right, and the person outside is partly lost in all of it. The window is doing quite a lot of the picture’s work.
The yellow is visible before the vehicle becomes clear. The figure’s outline breaks up as it passes through the wet surface. We can recognise a street without being offered a complete inventory of it. There is room to look twice, and the second look has something left to find.
Leiter worked in fashion as well as making the street photographs for which he is now widely known. His foundation describes reflections and unexpected street activity as part of both bodies of work. That continuity makes sense here: a window, which might normally be treated as an inconvenience, provides the picture with its particular arrangement of colour and distance.
The temptation with a photograph is often to make the subject easier to see. This one makes a fairly convincing case for leaving a little weather in the way.
