American photographer and painter Saul Leiter took intimate photographs of his muses over three decades. Deeply personal and contemplative, many of these images share tender moments underscored by the subjects’ trust in the photographer.

In My Room, the book published by Steidl that Leiter planned to make but never realized in his lifetime, reveals the world of the artist and the women in his life through his studies of the female figure.

These black-and-white images uncover the mutual and empathetic collaboration between the artist and his subjects. Leiter’s nudes have a spontaneous and romantic quality. These women are completely natural and uninhibited. Leiter captures them in the most natural and casual moments, portraying them while in their daily actions: the bedrooms, the face wrinkled by the pillow; one is pulling down her black stockings, another is unbuttoning her shirt, someone drinking a cup of coffee, someone fixing her stockings.

The poses are always sensual but stolen, sudden, spied on. With these images, he ushers viewers into his private world.