Ken Burns studied under the later Jerome Liebling, whose photo exhibit he introduced in Holyoke.
HOLYOKE — Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said here Thursday that outside of his parents, no one influenced him more than the late photographer Jerome Liebling.
"There is no person more central to who I am,” said Burns, introducing an exhibit of Liebling’s work.
The Liebling exhibit – "A Walk Through Holyoke - 1982" – consists of nearly 40 photographs including images such as the old red-brick mill buildings that dominate downtown and shots of Hispanic men, women and children.
The exhibit is part of this year’s first Holyoke: Points of View cultural celebration. Proceeds from the exhibit's opening gala event will benefit the Holyoke Public Library Capital Campaign.
The exhibit opened at Open Square on Lyman Street and will run there through April 7. After that it will be split into two sections for display at the Holyoke Public Library at City Hall at High and Dwight streets and at Wistariahurst Museum, 238 Cabot St., from April 8 to 28.
Burns, who has won acclaim for decades, studied under Liebling at Hampshire College in Amherst. Liebling instilled a respect for the still image and the truth such images could convey, he said. Liebling died in 2011 at 87.
"I think he made obsolete the idea that there are ordinary people," Burns said.
Studying and working with Liebling guided his career, said Burns, because the man now praised for documentaries once sought the silver screen.
"I wanted to go to Hollywood. I wanted to be Alfred Hitchcock, I wanted to be John Ford," Burns said.
Liebling helped to foster in him an appreciation for using images to tell stories about people and events, he said.
Ken Burns gestures during remarks at the opening of Jerome Liebling's photo exhibit "A Walk through Holyoke - 1982" at Open Square in Holyoke on Thursday.
"He was extremely supportive as a teacher but also very, very tough as a teacher, challenging us constantly," Burns said, introducing an exhibit of Liebling's work.
Burns' work is a tour of American history. He has made documentaries that have been hugely popular on public television, such as "The Dust Bowl," "Baseball," "The Civil War," "Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery," "Jazz," "Mark Twain," "The National Parks," "The Statue of Liberty," "Thomas Jefferson" and "The Brooklyn Bridge," his first, in 1982.
In the pipeline, Burns said, he has documentaries about "The Central Park Five," about black and Latino teenagers from Harlem wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in 1989, "The Roosevelts," and one on country music titled "I Can't Stop Loving You."
Before his prepared remarks, Burns told reporters of a meeting he had in 2002 with Apple computers' Steve Jobs. Apple wanted permission to use "The Ken Burns Effect" as a name for a video panning and zooming effect that would be available on the iconic computers, mirroring a Burns technique.
"I said, 'I'm really sorry but I don't do commercial endorsements,'" Burns said.
Nevertheless, he said, he secured a commitment from Apple to use thousands of dollars gained from sales of computers that had the effect to buy computer equipment for donation to nonprofit groups, said Burns, "which helped me maintain a plausible deniability."
Also, Burns said, documentaries show reality but “reality TV” is something else entirely.
“What we call ‘reality TV’ is not. Nobody eats bugs. Nobody proposes (marriage) in front of 150 million people,” Burns said.
Greg Saulmon, assistant online editor at The Republican, contributed to this story.