Michael Carlebach

The University of Miami Pays Homage to a Great Teacher and Photographer

By University of Miami

March 19^th, 2024

Former Miami Herald photographer Patrick Farrell has covered countless news events that have taken him to Cuba, Turkey, and many countries in Latin America. His visual reporting of a brutal hurricane season in Haiti earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.

Farrell, who is now a lecturer at the University of Miami School of Communication, said that each time one of his photos appeared in the newspaper he would say: “I wonder what Carlebach would think of that photo?”

Michael L. Carlebach had been his teacher and mentor when he was student at the U in the late 1970s. A dedicated professor, who spent countless hours in a darkroom developing film with students and providing feedback, Carlebach was the one who encouraged Farrell to pursue photography.

Described by many as laid-back and thoughtful, Carlebach died on Aug. 22, 2023, in Asheville, North Carolina. He was 78 years old.

Carlebach taught photography at the University from 1978 to 2005. He also chaired the Department of Art History. His work included being a staff photographer for the Miami Herald and a freelance photographer for the Black Star photo agency. As a freelancer, he contributed to the Herald’s Tropic Magazine and The New York Times. He covered the George McGovern presidential campaign for Time magazine.

On Thursday, March 21, 2024, at 5:30 p.m., University Libraries will hold a private event “Remembering Michael Carlebach” at the Kislak Center in the Otto G. Richter Library. The event will feature speeches by colleagues, students, and relatives and a video with testimonials from former students and colleagues.

“There was a way about him that was laid-back and encouraging. I would not be a photographer if it was not for him.”

Philip Brooker, former art director for theMiami Herald’s now defunct Tropic Magazine, met him in the 1980s.

“He strolled in one day and had these funny pictures of South Florida and we ran them, and people loved them,” Brooker said. Tropic ran about five other photographic projects by Carlebach. “His pictures were good observational pictures, and they were humorous,” he added.

Brooker and Carlebach became friends and went on vacations together with their wives. He remembers his friend as “calm, a good listener with a dry sense of humor and always ready to take a picture.”

“Michael would always carry his Leica camera and a book,” said Brooker. “He was a great reader.”

Many of Carlebach’s images were of everyday people in funny or absurd situations. His friends said that he admired French-born photographer Elliott Erwitt, who was also known for his black and white portraits of ironic and humorous situations in everyday life.

Margot Ammidown, Carlebach’s widow, was married to him for 40 years.

“I think what made Michael a great teacher was, not only his range of knowledge, but his tremendous passion for ideas,” she said. “He also had great compassion for people who suffered. He could tell the same story, whether it was about some human event in the Civil War, or Vietnam, or the American West, or the historical or social impact of some important photograph, in class after class with the same genuine emotion each time.”

Carlebach was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as an adult, a disease that had taken four of his siblings in their youth. He received a double lung transplant in 2005.

“I think the fact that he knew suffering at a personal level is partly what gave him the capacity of teaching historical events with compassion,” she said.

In 2011, Carlebach donated images from his personal archives to the University Libraries Special Collections. The Michael L. Carlebach Photography Collection contains more than 5,000 silver prints, color slides, and publications.

Cristina Favretto, head of the Libraries Department of Special Collections, said that “photography collections are often the most efficient ways of documenting a community, a neighborhood, an individual or groups of people, because the old saying that a photo equals a thousand words is true.

“There are instances where Carlebach is able to capture so many emotions and attitudes in a frame: racism, sexism, agism. He had a genius for capturing a fleeting emotion in a single frame,” she said.

His books include “The Origins of Photojournalism in America” and “American Photojournalism Comes of Age,” both published by Smithsonian Institution Press. Another book, “Sunny Land,” showcases his startling, humorous black and white images of the lesser documented "margins" of South Florida society. His survey histories of photojournalism are considered seminal in the field of photography, said many of his colleagues.

"I look for meaning at the edges of things," Carlebach said on his personal website about his work, "avoiding the incendiary characters who bully their way into our lives whether we like it or not ... to see and appreciate what is subtle, funny or poignant right in front of us. That's my job."