Jerome Liebling

On Easter Sunday in New York City, Jerome Liebling encountered a young boy on the street outside church, dressed in his Sunday best: broken shoe-laces, tattered trousers, a threadbare tweed coat and cap. Hands buried in his pockets, the child spread his coat open wide, and a click of Lieblings rolleiflex shutter transformed him into Butterfly Boy a... winged superhero who could soar away from his impoverished world. Photography exhibition: April 24 June 6th, 2015 Steven Kasher Gallery is proud to announce Jerome Liebling: Brooklyn and Other Boroughs, 1946 1996. This is the second exhibition of Lieblings work at Steven Kasher Gallery. The show features 50 black and white and color photographs taken in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx over a five decade span. The exhibition highlights Lieblings roots in, love for, and inspired representations of his home city. Jerome Liebling (1924-2011) was born in Harlem and grew up poor in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In 1942, Liebling quit his first semester at Brooklyn College to enlist in World War II, serving in the notoriously deadly glider infantry. The carnage he witnessed fueled his creative impulse to figure out where the pain was Liebling returned to Brooklyn College in 1946 to study art under the G.I. Bill. Ad Reinhardts Bauhaus-influenced design classes honed his formal sensibility; documentary photographer Walter Rosenblum opened his eyes to the power of the photographic image. In 1947, Liebling joined the Photo League, a socially minded collective of photographers who fanned across New York to document hidden corners of the city. For Liebling, children surviving the rough-and-tumble city streets became a symbol of fortitude. Their faces could inform all that they felt, from grace, to reflective questioning, to supreme prescience, he said. Sometimes there was a hint of defeat, but more often there was improvisation and brilliance. One Easter morning in Harlem, Liebling encountered a young child dressed in his Sunday best: broken shoe-laces, tattered trousers, a ...Read More