A snapshot of campus

More than 2,000 color images of Harvard’s architecture are now available to Harvard affiliates free and online through a library partnership with photographer Ralph Lieberman.

Lieberman began photographing Harvard’s architecture in May 2012 for a project commissioned by Harvard College Library’s Fine Arts Library (FAL) and the Graduate School of Design’s Frances Loeb Library. The images cover nearly every campus building and are cataloged and accessible through the library’s Visual Information Access (VIA) system. Lieberman, an art historian as well as a photographer, plans to add another 500 images to the database in next few months.

The photographer has a long association with Harvard that began in the early 1980s when the Fine Arts Library began acquiring his work. Now, some 15,000 of his black-and-white prints and negatives — principally documenting Italian Renaissance and Baroque architecture and sculpture, but also covering medieval, modern and classical structures — are part of the FAL’s special collections.

During a recent trip Cambridge, Mass. to photograph Harvard, Lieberman sat down with FAL Head of Collections Amanda Bowen to discuss his work, his favorite spots on campus and the process of creating art while also teaching it.