Graduation, Celebration and the New Liebling Center

That bitter-sweet, happy-sad time of students finishing their final year with a flourish - speeches, applause, hugs, handshakes, tears and goodbyes - was mingled this year, as if that wasn't enough all by it's self, with the opening and dedication of the finally finished Jerome Liebling wing of the Film Photo building. This year held an unusually friendly collection of students who have all turned into friends and fellow workers to be missed most now, just at the height of their abilities - as their work shows.

Also sandwiched into all of that was an alumni weekend with older and wiser graduates returning for still yet more hugs and handshakes. Their stories of life and projects sounding bigger and bolder than we could have imagined interspersed with the hint of children unknown and travels previously unmentioned while eating, laughing, talking, drinking and more laughing all under a large tent.

The commencement speakers sheltered under the biggest tent of the day were official (president Hexter), funny (Bob Goldwaith), and deeply interesting (Ken Burns). Seeing the students so well dressed standing next to people who look much like them only older - of course their parents - made the day rush by and merge into the final ceremony under still yet another tent, of thanks to donors, praise for faculty and admiration of the new Liebling  building as a shrine to photography and workspace for media.

I've seen the Liebling building grow from drawings and ill formed ideas stumbled over in meetings to foundations, steel, sheetrock and doors. Only days before the halls were still littered with conduit, ceiling tiles and buckets of paint, yet you could see how nice it was going to be, but when the track lights came on and the floors finally swept clean it seemed even more impressive - quite nice indeed. Then the surprise. Robert Seydel and a troupe of students started hanging the photos. Suddenly - what a change - we're all working in a museum quality space. A really great museum in which I have a small office. Wow. I'm actually impressed.

So now all of us have to "up our game" to measure up to what the building demands of us. It's a real tribute to Jerry who we all have admired for so long both as a working photographer and as a teacher. It isn't just a building anymore - it's a feeling -  a spirit but it is a tangible reminder that what we do is important and substantial. Seeing the alumni photo work on the walls makes that direct connection from the past to the present to the future. You stand there and see current students looking at the work and you can read on their faces the wonder and the power of images and the stories that we tell through those framed prints. Earlier listening to the alums talk about what we all were thinking decades ago also reminds me that the uncertainty of that time was much like the uncertainty of this time. We didn't know then where we would go or how we would really live and oddly that seems to be closely reflected in our current time - a disappearance of certainty and a discovery that not only don't we control our world as we thought, but that we may barely know how it works.

gunther