Jerome Liebling
[Photographer, b. 1924, New York, d. 2011, Northampton, Massachusetts.]
These days it seems that physical “truth” can easily be rearranged, rethought, or re-created outright. Any image can be made pristine, all the warts can be removed. But returning to the source of a thing—the real source—means the photographer has to watch, dig, listen for voices, sniff the smells, and have many doubts. My life in photography has been lived as a skeptic.
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My photographs tried to find the politicians at their most wary, most vulnerable, and perhaps most truthful moments. I wanted the photographs to reveal the person through stance and stare, when he or she was most reflective or off guard, in order to measure the person and event unfolding.
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For me photography had an immediacy... I was trying to resolve certain issues. What was fair or unfair about how people lived, and how they had to live? I thought the most penetrating and most immediate way to get to some of those questions was through photography.
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My sympathies have always been with the everyday people... the center of my photography.
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