By Marion Durand
Civic Photographer Jerome Liebling, who described his craft as “the combination of visual aesthetics and social action,” died on July 27 at the age of 87. He started his career at the socially conscious Photo League, mentored by the legendary Paul Strand, and went on to teach at the University of Minnesota and Hampshire College, where his unorthodox classes—he talked passionately about everything but photography and deemed technique unimportant—influenced generations of visual artists. His work ranged from poverty and political rallies to slaughterhouses, where he tried to grasp “the symbolic relationship between workers and animals.”
