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

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