JEROME LIEBLING
American
Jerome Liebling’s photographs are the visual mani-
festations of his fascination and concerns for people,
their places in the world, and their abiding passions.
Despite a career of over 50 years of image making,
his photographic identity is elusive; it is as difficult
to summarize Liebling in a phrase as it is to repre-
sent the nuanced range of his photographs in a
single example. Neither journalist nor portraitist,
Liebling’s niche can be provisionally labeled as
‘‘documentary humanist.’’ As Sarah Boxer wrote,
‘‘Liebling’s photographs go beyond the humane—
the standard tone of documentary—and reach the
human.’’ Though he claims that ‘‘My life in photo-
graphy has been lived as a skeptic,’’ and a note of
moral indignation pervades his work, his photo-
graphs are neither nihilistic nor cynical. Instead,
they seem transcendent, as if the visible, material
world is transmuting into something ethereal.
Exterior shells, costumes, and carapaces mingle
with living forms in his photographs; they instill a
keen appreciation of our own corporeal and spiri-
tual existence.
New York City was Liebling’s birthplace and first
major subject; his earliest important works record
children engaged in imaginative games and explora-
tions on the city streets, along with neighborhood
and family rituals. He studied photography prior to
and following his army enlistment in World War II.
His association with Walter Rosenblum at Brook-
lyn College inspired his participation in the Photo
League from 1946 to 1948; the socially conscious
activities of the League photographers matched his
own sense of the need for photography to address
issues of morality and justice. Besides Rosenblum,
Paul Strand’s photographs and films were impor-
tant influences, along with others engaged with the
progressive humanism of the League. Ad Reinhardt
was one of Liebling’s design teachers, and his Bau-
haus-inspired curriculum left an important mark on
Liebling’s work. Addressing the pain and suffering
he witnessed in wartime Europe became another
formative, lasting goal of his photography.
In 1949, he left New York City and began teach-
ing photography in Minneapolis at the University
of Minnesota. It was there that his career as a
photographer, filmmaker, and teacher was firmly
established. Liebling was among the earliest to
teach photography in a university setting (and
was one of the founders of the Society for Photo-
graphic Education in 1962). His legacy at the uni-
versity and in Minnesota is still strongly felt among
a generation of photographers.Light of Our Past,a
1983 exhibition in St. Paul, included Liebling and
the work of 30 other photographers who came to
maturity during Liebling’s two decades in Minne-
sota and who, in most cases, were either formally
or informally guided by Liebling. The influence is
more intangible than specific, more about a perso-
nal, open-ended, and inquiring attitude towards
one’s subject than a specific way of applying one’s
tools. Passionate engagement is valued highly, as is
a sense of justice and respect.
While his subject matter has been extremely
diverse, Liebling’s formal approach has been con-
sistent over time, reflecting a purity of vision ins-
tilled in him by his exposure to Bauhaus design
imperatives. As Naomi Rosenblum explains, ‘‘Lie-
bling has made the economy of means that is at the
heart of Bauhaus aesthetic doctrine reverberate
with emotional intensity’’ (Contemporary Photogra-
phers1982, 455). His photographs are made with a
hand-held, medium format camera, allowing both
descriptive richness and a mobile, responsive point-
of-view. Like August Sander’s, Liebling’s portrait
subjects are usually well described by contextual
details like clothing and equipment. Overriding all
physical evidence, however, is a gentle yet intense
regard that characterizes Liebling’s work. In speak-
ing of his portraits he refers to an exchange between
photographer and subject, a giving to each other
that is critical to the image. The results can feel very
intimate. His choices of subjects tend to favor those
whose lives are filled by labor. ‘‘My sympathies
remained more with the folk who had to struggle
to stay even, whose voices were often excluded from
the general discourse,’’ Liebling wrote in 1997.
He has worked in both black-and-white and
color, taking up the latter, with tremendous facility,
in the late 1970s. Many of his subjects listed below
have been realized in both media. The extended
series, often covering many years, is important to
Liebling, though more as accumulation of distinct,LIEBLING, JEROME