What Saul Leiter said in a 2008 interview with Eyemazing magazine:

“I had no philosophy about photography. Some people have a vision, an idea. I think, for instance, that at a certain point Diane Arbus was out to explore the strange aspects of life, maybe. When she writes in her book that she was in England and hadn’t found anything weird yet, she was looking for weirdness. I never had a specific approach to photography.

There are many photographers I like. I love Kertész and Atget. I like Brassaï, Boubat, and the French photographers. But I was just bumbling along [laughs]. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

Then, at some point, Henry Wolf gave me work at Harper’s Bazaar. I also had some work shown at MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art) in the Steichen exhibition. At the time, I didn’t appreciate that having my work shown at the Museum of Modern Art was a very special thing, because I never had a sense of having a career.

Having a sense of career can be very important to an artist. Some people have it, and some people don’t. And I definitely don’t! My friend Henry once said to me that I had a talent… for ignoring opportunities!”

Saul Leiter was a humble man who would rather talk about the artists and writers he admired than about himself.