SAUL LEITER

Photography is about finding things. And painting is different - it's about making something.

In order to build a career and to be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music, and to paint when I feel like it.

My family was very unhappy about my becoming a photographer - profoundly and deeply unhappy.

Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learned to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.

I like it when one is not certain what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.

Sometimes I'm amazed by how much you can do as a photographer.

What makes anyone think that I'm any good?

My father thought photography was done by lowlifes.

I like the Zen artists: they'd do some work, and then they'd stop for a while.

I've never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous. It's not that I didn't want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason - maybe it's because my father disapproved of almost everything I did - in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success.

When I am listening to Vivaldi or Japanese music or making spaghetti at 3 in the morning and realize that I don't have the proper sauce for it, fame is of no use.

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.

I am not immersed in self-admiration.

There are the things that are out in the open, and there are the things that are hidden. The real world has more to do with what is hidden.

I may be old-fashioned. But I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty - a delight in the nice things in the world. And I don't think one should have to apologise for it.

I'm sometimes mystified by people who keep diaries. I never thought of my existence as being that important.

My brothers were rabbis. My grandfather was a rabbi.

I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way.

I have been told that some of my photographs maybe indicate that I am a painter.

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities.

I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.

Max Kozloff said to me one day, ‘You’re not really a photographer. You do photography, but you do it for your own purposes – your purposes are not the same as others’. I’m not quite sure what he meant, but I like that. I like the way he put it.

Photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you'd never paid attention to.

The important thing in life is not what you get, but what you throw out.

I leave these speculations to others. It’s quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places. One doesn’t have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty.