In the received history of American photography, it was Stephen Shore and William Eggleston who were the trailblazers of colour photography in the early 1970s, but Leiter was using Kodachrome colour slide film at least two decades earlier. That greatness, though, was evident in his often painterly images, which evoked the flow and rhythm of life on the mid-century streets of New York in luminous colour, at a time when his contemporaries were shooting in black and white. 'I'm not carried away by the greatness of Mr Leiter.' 'What makes anyone think that I'm any good?' he asked Tomas Leach, who directed the feature-length documentary In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter (2012). Even then, Leiter was reluctant to accept the belated praise heaped upon him.

A pioneer of colour, he remained relatively unsung until he was rediscovered by curators and critics in his early 80s.

He sought out moments of quiet humanity in the Manhattan maelstrom, forging a unique urban pastoral from the most unlikely of circumstances.Saul Leiter, who has died aged 89, was one of the quiet men of American photography.

Instead, for him the camera provided an alternative way of seeing, of framing events and interpreting reality. But Leiter’s sensibility - comparable to the European intimism of Bonnard, a painter he greatly admires - placed him outside the visceral confrontations with urban anxiety associated with photographers such as Robert Frank or William Klein. The semi-mythical notion of the ‘New York street photographer’ was born at the same time, in the late-1940s. Though he continued to paint, exhibiting alongside Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning, Leiter’s camera became - like an extension of his arm and mind - an ever-present interpreter of life in the metropolis. Leiter moved to New York in 1946 intending to be a painter and through his friendship with the abstract expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart he quickly recognized the creative potential of photography. Although Edward Steichen exhibited some of Saul Leiter’s color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953, for forty years afterwards they remained virtually unknown to the art world.

Photographer saul leiter