What Do You Call Those?

This week Johnathan Singer, the person who printed Jerry Liebling's fantastic show, visited Kane Stewart's photography class and spoke for about three hours. He was quite interesting and shared a lot of background information about the process and his studio.

It's really remarkable that even after Jerry has died he's still leading the way for us, showing us what photography has to offer. HIs show in the film building now is a collection he curated himself and had printed on large format Epson flatbed printers at Singer Editions in Boston. The images are from Jerry's original film negatives scanned at high resolution, lightly processed in Photoshop and mounted and framed in Jerry's traditional white frames.

It's a great show and Jerry was really happy with the results, seeing things in the prints that were not possible with previous darkroom processes. It shows that photography isn't tied to any one medium or process. It isn't a fixed concept, but a constantly evolving approach to capturing images from our lives, from the world and sharing them in the form of prints on the wall.

These images are much larger than we've seen before which just by itself allows us to see deeper into the image, with new discoveries, new appreciations. I feel inspired to shoot more myself. It's like Jerry is there leading us down the hallway as usual, pointing to things we should see and waiting for us to hang our own prints to talk about. It's all quite inspiring, motivating and emotional.

As always, thanks Jerry.

gunther

The History of Photography

Jerome Liebling died this week. I hadn't seen him for almost a year and I knew his health was an issue. He founded the film/photo program at Hampshire College and taught here from the beginning until 1990 when he retired. When I read the date 1990 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette article I was quite surprised. For me Jerry had just left a few years ago, but I was wrong, quite wrong.

When he retired he had a wonderful photo show in the library gallery and I had the honor of helping to hang a couple of walls of his photographs. Toward the end of the day there was a discussion about how to hang two photos (part of a larger group of images) - which should be on which side. I said the distant shot should be on the left and the closeup shot should be on the right as if you were looking into the group of photos (scanning from left to right you moved into the image), not away. Everyone paused and looked at Jerry. He thought a moment and said I was right. Bingo, best evaluation ever. Jerry though I was right. Hah.

I think I took his concentrators class four times and each time my photos got better. Jerry could make a walk down a hallway a memorable experience with questions, comments and stories. It was the stories that surprised me the most. I loved his photos, but his stories were even better which I guess was the real reason his photographs were so good. He saw the story in the image and as a result each single image had the depth of a ten minute story in it, not just the length of the click.

I always said when you talked to Jerry you were talking to the history of photography and you felt it. After he retired that history, without him,  took many odd turns at times. Photography seemed to flounder and not know what to do with itself. Fashion took over and every year there was a new "look" to how photographs should be made. The classic documentary photo was deemed old fashioned and out came "text". You had to have "text" somewhere in the image to be hip or look like you were "making a statement". Gender politics took over for several years, and hasn't completely disappeared, making photos an ideological opportunity, though not really interested in photography at all.

It all thrashed around. Color came and went and then came back again. Size has always been troublesome and unresolved. There were arguments about frames, but everyone has forgotten that now. Digital was the new kid, then the only kid, then still a kid. Finally everyone just got tired of the changes every season and it's all settled down again. Most photos look like classic documentary photos after all. What a waste of effort. It should be a lesson for all of us, but it isn't, is it.

So Jerry really was the history of photography - from World War II until now. The people who knew him, were students of his and, ever widening, were students of his students have had that history touch them.

The power of photography is in the story that's captured by the image and the relationship of the photographer to that story. The method of a great photographer is to have the camera disappear in their hands. The measure of a great photograph is to have the photographer disappear and leave only the image and the story. Jerry's photos are still telling his stories and will forever. Thanks Jerry.

gunther