The revelation takes two forms. More than a third of the photographs weren’t in either the Smith or Yale shows. “People Waiting, Boston, Massachusetts,’’ for example, from 1982, could be one of Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s street scenes — only it predates diCorcia’s first solo show by three years. “Mexican Mother and Child,’’ from 1974, manages to be both exquisitely tender and richly comic.
Far more important than novelty, though, is size. The images have been printed very big, most of them in the vicinity of 30-by-40-inches. Liebling collaborated with Jonathan Singer, of Singer Editions, in Boston, to create prints that are large yet exceedingly fine.
Scale in a photograph can be a distraction — even a cheat. Not here: It’s an enhancement. These pictures aren’t just bigger, they’re also fuller. The details in Liebling’s famous frieze-like “May Day, Union Square Park, New York City’’ leap out now with wondrous clarity. For one thing, you can see the image is as much a study of hands, both human and sculptural, as it is of life imitating art. Or there’s how the weave of the basket the woman is carrying in “Mother and Child, Malaga, Spain’’ chimes with the tracery of spokes in the bicycle wheels behind her.
The danger with printing negatives large is that the pic tures can look like posters: overt, simplistic, a bit crude. Even the most exacting photographer can prove susceptible to the siren song of size. Look at Ansel Adams late in his career. There’s no denying the sheer kapow of bigness.
These pictures, in contrast, in no way resemble posters. Rather, they’re like windows. One feels the presence of the rest of the world behind what’s actually seen. The kapow, and it’s there, is as much human as visual. Monumental but not overbearing, these pictures are hard to imagine as having been any other size — they feel so right.
Liebling may be as well known for his students as his photographs. He began teaching at the University of Minnesota in 1949. After two decades there, he moved on to Hampshire College, where he taught two decades more. His most famous pupil at Hampshire was an aspiring filmmaker named Ken Burns.
