In his ravishing color photographs, Saul Leiter’s quietly elaborate layering of urban surfaces is instantly recognizable—as is his enduring subject, the East Village neighborhood where he spent almost his entire adult life. Many thousands of the pictures Leiter took over almost seven decades were never developed, printed, or seen during his lifetime. In Aperture’s 2021 issue, “New York,” a portfolio of unpublished 35mm slides confirm and extend the stubborn singularity of Leiter’s color language. “I believe that there is something in you that strives for order and within that order there’s a certain kind of mishmashy confusion, and you bring this mishmashy confusion, if you succeed, into some kind of order,” Leiter once said. “There’s an element of control. There’s also an element that just kind of happens, if you’re very lucky.” On the occasion of a new publication by @artbook of Leiter’s unpublished works, we revisit Randy Kennedy (@bklynkennedy)’s essay from the “New York” issue. See our link in bio to read more. Images by Saul Leiter, Untitled, early 1950s–1961; Courtesy the Saul Leiter Foundation