Suddenly there was this photographer doing this beautiful 50’s stuff but with a really contemporary eye. I buy a lot of photography books, so I bought his book Early Colour. Tomas: I can’t remember who it was, but a couple of people said to me that I should check out his work. How did you first come to know Saul’s work? Jim: You mentioned that you started out working on Little Scraps of Paper when you were first chatting to Saul about In No Great Hurry. Eventually I’d like it to be an online archive. We had an exhibition in March and since then we’ve done one which is great but it’s difficult to find time.
Tomas: Yes, whenever I can find the time, which can be hard. That’s it, we just wanted it to be about that, and feature as many varied people as possible. Sketchbooks, notebooks, a wall or wherever. It’s artists talking about how they come up with their ideas and where they put them once they’ve got them. They have to be about the thought process, or the work process, not about any given piece of work or show. Each film has to be about 90 seconds long, or around that. We setup our own dogma rules for the project as well. It’s fascinating to just go into someone’s studio and see their personal sketchbooks and where they work. Other people who are into the series have done the odd one here and there. I’ve done about 32 of them, and seven other directors have done the rest. We’ve now made 40 films over the last two years. But then we thought it’d be crazy to do just one with no purpose, so we created a series of them.
I think I’d drunk too much coffee with a friend and I said that what I really wanted to do was something short and personal about someone great I know. When I was in discussions with Saul about making No Great Hurry, I decided to start doing that as well. Jim: The Little Scraps shorts have proved to be really popular. On the side I also run Little Scraps of Paper Tomas: I come from a documentary background really, I make my living from making commercials and documentaries. Jim: Could you give us a little information about your background, to kick things off? The resulting film as Jim Stephenson discovered is a moving, sensitive record of an icon of contemporary photographic practice. Tomas Leach is a London based film maker who wanted to create a documentary featuring the reclusive Leiter. Saul Leiter was a pioneer in the use of colour within photography throughout the Fifties and Sixties who continues to work from his New York studio.
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