Liebling, Jerome. Jerome Liebling. December 5, 1980 - January 4, 1981.

Corcoran Gallery of Art. Essay by Jane Livingston. Series, Photography at the Corcoran. 1,500 copies printed. Stapled wraps, 16 pages, checklist of 69 photographs, 11 illustrations (ten in color).  Near fine with a trace of rubbing on back cover.  Summary:

Jerome Liebling is an exhibition catalog documenting a solo exhibition of Jerome Liebling’s photography that ran from December 5, 1980, to January 4, 1981. It serves as part of the museum’s acclaimed Photography at the Corcoran series.

Core Themes and Content

• The Color Transition: The catalog captures a vital turning point in Liebling's career. While historically celebrated for his stark black-and-white documentary photography, this exhibition and catalog marked his significant pivot toward working in vivid color during the late 1970s.

• A Curated Checklist: The booklet includes an official exhibition checklist comprising 69 photographs. The curated plates focus heavily on his emerging color work, featuring 10 color illustrations and only one black-and-white print.

• The "American Color" Focus: The featured imagery spotlights Liebling’s keen eye for the social landscape of the United States. It showcases his mid-to-late 20th-century work, notably tracking his observations of street life, aging communities, and working-class environments in places like Brooklyn (such as Brighton Beach) and the American Midwest.

• Critical Framework: The volume features an insightful introductory essay by Jane Livingston, the chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery at the time. Her text provides a critical framework for the exhibition, tracing Liebling's artistic evolution from his early New York Photo League days to his mastery of color composition, accompanied by a detailed professional chronology.

The small-scale publication, limited to a print run of only 1,500 copies, remains a rare and valuable artifact for scholars tracking the institutional recognition of color photography at major American museums during the early 1980s.

Jerome Liebling (1924–2011) was an influential American photographer, filmmaker, and educator whose career spanned over six decades and left a profound mark on documentary and humanist photography. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he served in World War II before studying art at Brooklyn College under Ad Reinhardt and joining the socially conscious Photo League, where he honed his signature "civic" style of direct, empathetic documentary photography. Liebling’s work famously dignified ordinary, working-class people, political figures, and institutional environments, seamlessly evolving from stark, Bauhaus-influenced black-and-white compositions in the mid-20th century to pioneering, vivid color work in his later years. As a brilliant filmmaker and a legendary professor—founding the film and photography programs at both the University of Minnesota and Hampshire College—he mentored generations of filmmakers and photographers, including Ken Burns, cementing his legacy as both a masterful visual chronicler of American life and an architectural pillar of photographic education.