Jerome Liebling, chronicler of the commonplace – in pictures

After serving in the US air force, Liebling studied art and design at Brooklyn College. In 1947 he joined the Photo League, a co-operative committed to social documentary. Butterfly Boy, shot in New York City in 1949, is arguably his most famous image
Photograph: Jerome Liebling

This portrait of a blood-spattered worker in a Minnesota slaughterhouse, taken in 1952, epitomises Liebling's determination 'to figure out where the pain was, and to show things that people wouldn't see unless I showed them'
Photograph: Jerome Liebling

In 1949 Liebling joined the University of Minnesota, setting up a photography and film course. His desire to capture the human spirit, epitomised by this portrait (Women Cleaning Church, Malaga, Spain, 1966), inspired several generations of pupils
Photograph: Jerome Liebling

Boy and Car, New York City, 1949 – another portrait rooted in the Photo League's tradition of social documentary. Like other members, Liebling was obliged to quit the organisation when the US government blacklisted it on political grounds
Photograph: Jerome Liebling

Mother and Child, Malaga, Spain, 1966. 'He was so authentic,' the acclaimed documentary director Ken Burns, a former pupil, would later tell the New York Times. 'You wanted to be like him. You wanted to tell the truth' Photograph: Jerome Liebling

College Athlete, Summer Camp, Hinsdale, Massachusetts, 1980. Liebling continued to take photographs until the latter end of his life, spurning digital technology in favour of the Rolleiflex film camera he described as 'an engrained part of me' Photograph: Jerome Liebling

Boy at Camp, Hindsdale, Massachusetts, 1980. Liebling received two Guggenheim fellowships and, at the time of his death, was professor emeritus of Hampshire College, site of the Jerome Liebling Centre of Film, Photography and Video
Photograph: Jerome Liebling

Men's Hat Shop, Jerusalem, 1983. Shot in fading sunlight, the photograph is imbued with an unmistakable melancholy. 'It’s too easy if everything is soft, and you can just buy your way and live well,' Liebling once told the New York Times
Photograph: Jerome Liebling

Morning in Monessen Pennsylvania, 1983. 'The thing which is closest to us – which is the everyday, the ordinary – I think is very important,' Liebling once reflected Photograph: Jerome Liebling

Liebling liked to photograph whatever caught his eye: coalminers, carnivals, state fairs, street scenes, children and migrant workers. Captured here is a man eating lunch at a home for the aged in St Paul, Minnesota, in 1962 Photograph: Jerome Liebling

May Day, Union Square park, New York City, 1948. In this famous scene, Liebling succeeds in making the seated figures seem almost at one with the frieze that provides the backcloth to the photograph
Photograph: Jerome Liebling

People Waiting, Boston, Massachusetts, 1982. Another ostensibly mundane scene that has the quality of a window into the wider world Photograph: Jerome Liebling

SoHo at Night, New York City, 1989. Liebling's photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Photograph: Jerome Liebling