Leiter from Steidlville

The Saul Leiter Early Color book appears to be available directly from Steidl this morning—you can add it to your cart and a reader who purchased it that way got a purchase confirmation. Prices are $65, £35, and €48, although you can get 10% off if you join Steidl's book club.

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Mike  (Thanks to Gabriele Harhoff)

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Comments

[Carsten Bockermann]

Many thanks for the update. I just ordered the book and got an immediate confirmation. Let's see how long it takes until it arrives...

Carsten

[sevres-babylone]

Thanks, Mike. Ditto Carsten's post. Everyone else can rest assured, that now that I've ordered from the publisher, Amazon will get the book in stock. I base that on my experience that when I passed on my local bookstore, and tried to save a few bucks on Winogrand's 1964, ordering it from Amazon. Marked temporarily out of stock, not only did the book not become available, but the publisher went out of business. I'm King Midas in reverse, you see.

Back to Saul Leiter. I was fortunate to see an exhibition of his exceptional work at the Cartier-Bresson gallery when I was in Paris in April. I'm looking forward to receiving the book.

[David]

Thank you, Mike,

I ordered a copy from another source earlier - and then they were out of stock, so no book.

Now I ordered from Steidl with the discount.

best wishes

David

[Mike]

Looks like they're charging $27.50 for shipping to USA though? Comes close to $85 total.

[Mike J.]

"Comes close to $85 total"

And that might end up being too much for this book, granted. But with photography-art titles you really want, it's *usually* best just to pay any reasonable price when you can. Three weeks ago the cheapest copy of this book on Amazon was $225. Who knew that situation was temporary? Take a look at a book an earlier commenter mentioned, "Winogrand 1964" (a book I covet). Cheapest one listed from Amazon's affiliated sellers is $200...in "used, acceptable" condition.

On the other hand I once paid $150 for an out-of-print hardcover of a book I wanted for its content, and three weeks later it came out in paperback for $15.

So is it worth $85? Depends how much you want it.

Mike J.

[Hugh Crawford]

You could try Steidlville's New York bookseller , from the Steidl web site
Box Books
412 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10014
Their phone number is 212 965 9555
Then it would be the nice cheap book rate postage.

[Hendrik]

As far as I can see there are the following Leiter books (more or less) available:
*A Photofile on him - very cheap
*Early color, obviously
*The self titled one, which I believe was the catalogue to the Paris exhibition mentioned (in the description at Steidl it says 50 b&w plates, 50 color)
*Early b&w, not yet published.

Has anyone been able to compare (some of) these? I'd especially like to know whether the self-titled one shares the color plates with EC or whether they are partly/ completely different.

Hendrik

[aizan]

the color plates in saul leiter are a tiny bit smaller and cooler. i haven't noticed any differences in cropping, though.

[Mike]

"So is it worth $85? Depends how much you want it."

Mike: Yes, at that price I still want it. I wrapped my first edition in cellophane as soon as I saw the outrageous prices it's going for. I don't even want to touch it now, and yet I'm dying to see those photos again. I feel stupid shelling out more money for a second copy, but hey, it beats putting it in the stock market.

[Antonio Dias]

The Citroen should not be on that list. It's a classic both of design and engineering.

[David Nicol]

Thanks for the tip, i ordered mine on the 28th and it's just arrived. Very well packaged and complete with a hardback 253 page 2008-09 winter catalogue with plenty of pictures to browse through as well. And all for £31.50, bargain!

[hughlook]

Yup, mine just came from Steidl too. Leiter's work is even better than I'd expected from the bits & pieces I'd seen before. He seems to reflect how cities can be experienced as momentary, fragmented incidents and objects in a sea of time and motion. The colour is not just beautiful, but a completely integral part of the genius - so much for "real photographers only use black & white". Colleagues, who are not photography-aware (to put it mildly), were also knocked out by the photographs.

I'm left with one regret: street photographers no longer benefit from hats. Leiter is wonderful on hats. I was told when I started photography "if you want to improve your photographs, use a tripod" (complete tosh, I now realise). I'm inclined to think now "if you want to improve your photographs, give everyone in your pictures a hat".

The catalogue is splendid, but twice the size & heft of the book itself! Its scale and production values astonished my colleagues - as consultants in the publishing industry we've not seen marketing of this ambition for some time.

PS: I write this just before midnight GMT, working late partly in order to hear what Mike's countrymen have in store for the rest of us. My partner (US citizen) voted some days ago, but is twitchy as hell at the moment. Fingers and everything else crossed.

[Quang-Tuan Luong]

Just curious, how do you tell the first printing from the second ? It looks like on Steidl books they are not marked as such, unlike, let say Nazraeli, who mentions "first printing", "second printing", etc..

[Mike J.]

Apparently the second printing is identical to the first. There are no set standards for how books have to be marked for edition and printings; it's all up to the publisher.

Mike J.