Join us for the ceremonial unveiling of a plaque honoring internationally acclaimed American photographer and painter Saul Leiter at the building where he lived and worked. We will hear about Leiter’s approach to street photography, much of which took place in the East Village, and about the painterly quality of his color-work and the features that made him one of the key figures in the New York school of photography.

This is our 24th plaque unveiling. Our plaque program has honored and marked the homes of local figures from Jane Jacobs to James Baldwin and Jean-Michel Basquiat; Allen Ginsberg to Charles Mingus; Frank O’Hara to Frank Stella; and Martha Graham to Lorraine Hansberry, as well as historically significant sites such as the former NAACP headquarters, the Fillmore East, and Julius’ Bar.

You can learn more about our plaque program and explore the other plaques here and here. 

Participants:

Vince Aletti is a critic and curator based in New York’s East Village. The former art editor and photography critic for the Village Voice, Aletti wrote weekly photo exhibition reviews for the New Yorker from 2005 until 2016, when he left to work on his book Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines (2019). He remains a contributor to the New Yorker and Aperture. His book The Drawer was chosen as Photobook of the Year at the 2023 Aperture/Paris Photo Awards.

Margit Erb is the founder and director of the Saul Leiter Foundation. She represented Leiter at Howard Greenberg Gallery from 1996 until the artist’s death in 2013, while helping to organize his archive. She has worked on all of Leiter’s books, including his first book, Early Color (2006). She co-produced the 2013 documentary In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter. Today Margit, along with her husband, Michael Parillo, maintains Leiter’s extensive archive, located in the artist’s former studio.

Marilyn Appleberg is a native New Yorker who in 1969 moved from her parents’ home in Brooklyn to 111 East 10th Street, where she still resides. She is an author, a preservationist responsible for extending the St. Mark’s Historic District, and an activist who has spent five decades working to protect and enhance the integrity of her building, her street, and her community. In 2015, she wrote the book East Village: Lens on the Lower East Side for the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative. In 2012 she received a Village Award presented by Village Preservation for her efforts on behalf of the East Village community.