People who travel, people who are exposed to literature, people who are exposed to people different from themselves (what you find at Baruch) have a richer experience of life. It’s about finding different ways, different attitudes toward life. It’s what I try to do with photography—and reading and traveling. I try to get hold of the essence,” says Baruch sophomore Daniel Lebor, a lover of the liberal arts, photography, and travel.
Lebor hopes someday to make his living as a photographer. “In what sense I want to be a photographer, I’m not sure. That’s one thing that I hope my travels will bring me to.” Lebor, who credits his parents with giving him the freedom and ability to travel (“they’re special people; I’m very lucky”), has already traveled—and photographed—extensively around the world. He’s been to Paris (where he studied at the Académie de Paris), Normandy, Cannes, Monte Carlo, London, Amsterdam, Israel, and Poland (where he visited concentration camp sites). He has had mentors in Paris and New York City. “The more you see, the more you learn, the better you become,” he says.
So how did Lebor, a self-taught photographer who has been practicing his art seriously for five years now, come to Baruch? “Why am I at Baruch rather than around the block at SVA? Because I have a deep love of liberal arts, especially literature. It’s just something I can’t do without. Even though this college is not known for its liberal arts, I’ve had many remarkable classes here,” he says. Furthermore, Lebor describes Baruch itself as an education: “When I came to Baruch, I found a completely different world from the one I knew. I grew up in Long Island in a fairly homogeneous environment. But at Baruch there are so many different races, ethnicities. It’s really a beautiful thing. In one class, at 17, I was by far the youngest person in the class. There were people in their late 20s, supporting a family, working two jobs, and coming to school. I was in awe of them. I was confronted with what goes on in the world. Both photography and Baruch put me in touch with reality. They ground me.”

—DH