Gisèle Freund

Gisèle Freund (born Gisela Freund; 19 December 1908 31 March 2000 Her best-known book, Photographie et société, is an expanded edition of her seminal 1936 dissertation. It was the first sociohistorical study on photography as a democratic medium of self-representation in the age of technological reproduction. With this first doctoral thesis on photography at the Sorbonne, she was one of the first women habilitated there.

Freund's major contributions to photography include using the Leica Camera (with its ability to house 35 mm film rolls with 36 frames) for documentary reportage and pioneering Kodachrome and Agfacolor positive film for colour portraits of writers and artists, which allowed her to develop a "uniquely candid portraiture style" that distinguishes her in 20th-century photography.

Politically left-leaning all her life, she became president of the French Union of Photographers in 1977. In 1981, she took the official portrait of French President François Mitterrand, and was made Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1982 and Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, the highest decoration in France, in 1983. In 1985, she became the first photographer to be honored with a retrospective at the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris.

Biography

Early years Freund was born in Schöneberg (Berlin) into a textile merchant family, her parents being Julius and Clara (née Dressel) Freund, a wealthy Jewish couple.

Her father, Julius Freund, was a keen art collector, Max Slevogt, Käthe Kollwitz and Max Liebermann were friends of the family. He had an interest in photography as well, like the work of Karl Blossfeldt, whose close-up studies explored the forms of natural objects. Freund's father bought Gisèle her first camera, a Voigtländer 6 × 9 in 1925 and a Leica camera as a present for her graduation in 1929.

In 1931, Freund studied sociology and art history at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Breisgau, Germany; and in 1932 and 1933 she studied at the University of Frankfurt under Theodor W. Adorno, Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias (also known as the Frankfurt School). At university she became an active member of a student socialist group and was determined to use photography as an integral part of her socialist practice. One of her first stories, shot on 1 May 1932, "shows a recent march of anti-fascist students" who had been "regularly attacked by Nazi groups".

Paris In March 1933, some weeks after Adolf Hitler and his regime rose to power in Germany, Walter Benjamin fled to Paris. On 30 May, Gisèle followed him since she was both a socialist activist and a Jew. She escaped to Paris with her negatives strapped around her body to get them past the border guards. Gisèle and Walter Benjamin would continue their friendship in Paris, where Freund would famously photograph him reading at the National Library. They both studied and wrote about art in the 19th and 20th centuries as Freund continued her studies at the Sorbonne. Being acquainted now, Malraux invited Freund to document the First International Congress in Defence of Culture in Paris of 1935, where she was introduced to and subsequently photographed many of the notable French artists of her day. Freund befriended the famed literary partners, Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company, and Adrienne Monnier of Maison des Amis des Livres. In 1935, Monnier arranged a marriage of convenience for Freund with Pierre Blum so that Freund could obtain a residence permit to remain in France legally (they officially divorced after the war in 1948).

In 1936, while Sylvia Beach was visiting the United States, Freund moved into Monnier and Beach's shared apartment and they became intimates. When Beach returned, she ended her intimate relationship with Monnier yet maintained a strong friendship with both Monnier and Freund. Freund finished her Ph.D. in sociology and art at the Sorbonne in 1936, Right after the photo-session her taxi crashed, which damaged her cameras and ruined the films. She told Joyce and being superstitious, Joyce was convinced that his cursing had caused the crash, so he invited Freund back to his home for a second round of photographs. Time magazine used one of these photos for its cover on 8 May 1939. The entire series of photographs would eventually be published in 1965 in James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years by Freund and V. B. Carleton and a preface by Simone de Beauvoir.

In 1939, after being "twice refused admission to Tavistock Square", Freund gained the confidence of Virginia Woolf and captured the iconic color photographs of the Woolfs on display in the English National Portrait Gallery. Woolf even "agreed to change her clothes to see which best suited the colour harmony and insisted on being photographed with Leonard (and their spaniel Pinka). In some of the prints, Woolf is pale and lined, in others smiling a little and more youthful. The background of fabrics and mural panels by Bell and Grant adds to the value of the images; this was the inner sanctum of the queen of Bloomsbury where parties were given and friends came to tea. Just over a year later the house was destroyed in The Blitz."

On 10 May 1940, the Wehrmacht started the Battle of France by invading the Benelux states. On 10 June 1940, with the Nazi invasion of Paris looming, Freund escaped Paris to the free zone in the Dordogne. Her husband by convenience, Pierre, had been captured and deported to a prison camp. He was able to escape and met with Freund before going back to Paris to fight in the French Resistance. As the wife of an escaped prisoner, a Jew, and a socialist, Freund "feared for her life".

In February 1939, half a year before the beginning of World War II, her parents had finally fled Germany to Great Britain , and Nazi Germany confiscated all their belongings (Reich Flight Tax); they had to leave behind. Her father died two years later, and her mother, penniless, was forced to sell the art collection, that had already been moved to neutral Switzerland in 1933, shortly after Hitler's .

Buenos Aires, Mexico, and Paris again In 1942, with the help of André Malraux, who told his friends, "we must save Gisèle!", Freund fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina "at the invitation of Victoria Ocampo, director of the periodical Sur. Ocampo was at the center of the Argentinean intellectual elite, and through her Freund met and photographed many great writers and artists, such as Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda."

While living in Argentina, Freund started a publishing venture called Ediciones Victoria, that would feature books on France. She writes, "in reality, I started this for the De Gaulle government in exile where I was working in the Information ministry, voluntarily, without payment." She also founded a relief action committee for French artists and became a spokesperson for Free France. After the war she got back to Paris in 1946 with an exhibition on Latin America ready, and three tons of collected provisions for writers and journalists.

In 1947, Freund signed a contract with Magnum Photos as a Latin America contributor, but by 1954, she was declared persona non grata by the U.S. government at the height of the Red Scare for her socialist views, and Robert Capa forced her to break ties with Magnum, to save himself and David Seymour from investigations of the FBI. In 1950, her photo coverage of a bejewelled Evita Perón for Life magazine caused a diplomatic stir between the United States and Argentina and upset many of Perón's supporters—the ostentatious photographs went against the official party line of austerity; Life was blacklisted in Argentina, and once again, Freund had to escape a country with her negatives. She moved to Mexico and became friends with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco.

In 1953, she moved back to Paris permanently. Over the life of her career, she went on over 80 photojournalistic assignments for Life , Time, The Sunday Times, Picture Post, Weekly Illustrated, and the French Vu, Paris Match, Points de Vue, and Arts et Décoration, as well as the Swiss Du. From the 1960s onward, Freund continued to write. The "continuation" of her dissertation, now called Photography & Society, came out in 1974, written in French, and translated into German the same year. The English translation followed in 1980. Further editions came out in Spanish (1976), Swedish (1977), Korean (1979), Italian (1980), Croatian (1981), Japanese (1986), Greek (1996), and Turkish (2007). In 1977, she became president of the Fédération Française des Associations des Photographes Créateurs, the photographer's trade union, a position Henri Cartier-Bresson previously held.

The same year Germany saw her first retrospective curated by Klaus Honnef (de), who also accounted for her participation in the documenta 6. This edition of the important international exhibition for contemporary art, had a focus on photography and celebrated its 150-year anniversary with a large survey, in which pictures of Joyce and Evita Perón were featured in its portrait section. In the 1970s she was also recognized in the US, in galleries at first, and it was a large exhibition of her works at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1979. It led to the acquisition of all 180 photographs on display by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her reputation as an important portrait photographer grew with each successive exhibition. She was celebrated as one of the best portrait photographers of the twentieth century: Upon her death in Paris, "President Jacques Chirac praised her as 'one of the world's greatest photographers'."

She is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris near her home and studio at 12 rue Lalande.

Estate Since 2011 Freund's principal estate is managed through l'Institut Mémoires de l'Édition Contemporaine (IMEC) in Paris and stored at Abbaye d'Ardenne, near Caen. The collection contains portraits and some series of journalistic photographs from France, Germany, England and Latin America, in total around 1600 black and white negatives with their contact sheets, 1200 color and black and white prints, 8200 slides (originals and duplicates) and approximately the same number of press prints. Besides the photographs the collection comprises manuscripts, notebooks, diaries, letters and documents pertaining to exhibitions and the management of her archive. Her library of about 2000 books and journals is also part of the collection.

Since the end of 2022 the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt holds another part of her estate. Formerly in the hands of Hans Puttnies (1946–2020), who had closely worked with Gisèle Freund for over twenty years, the museum bought, with the financial help of the city, his collection of photographs, writings and other documents and belongings of her. It comprises 32 archive boxes with over 1.150 photographs spanning the years of 1927 to 1975, over half of them vintage prints, many never been shown publicly. Besides personal notes, address books and correspondences there are previously unreleased manuscripts, such as a typoscript of an unfinished autobiographical novel Freund wrote in Mexico between 1952–1954.

Hans Puttnies, professor of communication studies, author, photographer and film maker, became friends with Freund, after he wrote a review on a German edition of her original dissertation in 1968. Puttnies collaborated with her on several projects and provided essays for exhibition catalogues of her works. Over the years Freund had given him many photographs and he had photographed her. He was about to write Freund's biography but died before finishing it in 2020.

Notable work Freund's dissertation was a seminal sociohistorical study on photography, first published in book form by Adrienne Monnier in 1936, and a revised version was published in the 1970s with translations in several languages. One of her best-known early photo works shows one of the last political street demonstrations in Germany before Hitler took power. In 1936 Freund photographed the effects of the depression in England for Life. Freund became famous for her colour portraits of writers and artists, including Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Matisse, Marcel Duchamp and many others. In 1981, Freund made her (unretouched) official portrait of François Mitterrand, who was President of France (1981–1995). 1978 – Cultural Prize of the German Society for Photography DGPh (Germany)

Exhibitions Gisèle Freund (second at right) at the opening of her exhibition at Galerie municipale du Château d'Eau, Toulouse, March 1981 with (from left) Michel Tournier, Jean Dieuzaide, Michel Delaborde, unidentified woman. Photographed by Michel Dieuzaide

1939 – La Maison des Amis des Livres, Paris, France 1942 – Galerie Amigos del Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1945 – Palacio de Bellas Artes, Valparaiso Galeria de Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1946 – Maison de l'Amérique latine, Paris, France 1962 – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, France 1963 – Le portrait francais au XXe siecle [French Portraiture in the 20th Century], Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cabinet des estampes, Paris, France & Berlin and Düsseldorf, Germany 1964 – Ecrivains et artistes français et britanniques, Institut Francais du Royaume-Uni, London, U.K. 1965 – Princeton Art Museum, US 1966 – Mona Bismarck American Center, Paris, France 1968 – Au pays des visages, 1938–1968: trente ans d'art et de littérature à travers la caméra de Gisèle Freund [In the realm of faces: thirty years of art and literature through the lens of Gisèle Freund], Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris & Fondation Rayaumont, Asnieres-sur-Oise 1973 – Musée Descartes, Amsterdam, Netherlands 1975 – Giselle Freund [sic], Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, US 1976 – Focus Gallery, San Francisco, California, US 1977 – Gisèle Freund: Fotografien 1932–1977, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, Germany (first major retrospective, catalogue) – Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany – Musée Réattu, Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles , Arles, France – Fotoforum, Frankfurt, Germany – David Mirvich Gallery, Toronto, Canada 1978 – Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan – Shadai Gallery, Tokyo, Japan – Marcus Krakow Gallery, Boston, US 1979 – Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, US (catalogue) 1980 – Galerie Agathe Gaillard, Paris, France – Galerie photo art basel (Anita Neugebauer), Basel, Switzerland 1981 – Galerie municipale du Chateau d'Eau, Toulouse, France – Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona, US – Axiom Gallery, Sydney, Australia. 1982 – Koplin Gallery, Los Angeles, US – The Photographers' Gallery, London 1983 – Boston National Library[?], US – Center for Creative Art, New Orleans, US – Stanford University Museum of Art 1984 – Fotoforum, Frankfurt, Germany 1987 – Galerie zur Stockeregg, Zurich, Switzerland – Photographs of James Joyce and Friends, Gotham Book Mart & Gallery, New York, US 1988 – Gisèle Freund, Werkbund-Archiv, Museum der Alltagskultur des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, Germany (catalogue), and Vidéothèque de Paris, Paris 1989 – Gisèle Freund: James Joyce, 1939, Galerie de France, Paris, France – Gisèle Freund, James Joyce in Paris, Galerie photo art basel, Basel, Switzerland 1991 – Itinéraires, retrospective, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (catalogue) – Galerie photo art basel, Basel, Switzerland – Frida Kahlo et ses amis, Galerie de France, Paris 2008 – Gisèle Freund: ritratti d'autore, 1908–2008, cento anni dalla nascita, Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan, Italy (catalogue) – Gisèle Freund – Photojournalism and Portraiture. Tribute to Gisèle Freund on Her 100th Anniversary, Photomeetings Luxembourg, Galerie Clairefontaine (100 photographs from the collection of Marita Ruiter), and symposium and exhibition at the University of Luxembourg (catalogue) – Gisèle Freund – Reportagen und Portraits zum 100. Geburtstag, Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin (adopted from Luxembourg) – Gisèle Freund – Wiedersehen mit Berlin, 1957–1962, Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, Germany 2011–2012 – Gisèle Freund: l'œil frontière, Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, France 1933-1940" (catalogue) 2014 – From Paris to Victoria: Gisèle Freund's James Joyce Photographs, University of Victoria, Canada 2014 – Gisèle Freund: Photographische Szenen und Porträts. Academy of Arts, Berlin, Germany (catalogue) 2015 – Frida Kahlo: Mirror, Mirror, Throckmorton Fine Art, New York, US 2018 – Gisèle Freund – Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera, Galerie Clairefontaine, Luxembourg (catalogue) ; Galleria Guidi & Schoen, Genoa, Italy; FLATZ Museum, Dornbirn, Austria 2022 – Gisèle Freund – Ce sud si lointain. Photographies d'Amérique latine, Maison de l'Amérique latine, Paris, France

Books by Gisèle Freund Even for publications without texts of her own, especially exhibition catalogues, Freund's collaboration was essential. Original editions followed by translations into other languages are listed, as long as no English translation was published. La photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle [French Photography in the 19th Century], dissertation, La Maison des Amis des Livres, Paris1936. . Spanish ed.: La fotografía y las clases medias en Francia durante el siglo 19 ensayo de sociologia y de estética, Ed. Losada, Buenos Aires 1946. . German ed.: Photographie und bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Eine kunstsoziologische Studie, preface by H. P. Gente, Rogner & Bernhard (Passagen), München 1968. French re-ed.: André Gunthert (ed.), Christian Bourgois/Seuil (Points), 2011, ISBN 9782267022650. France, 1945. Guía de arquitectura mexicana contemporánea [Guide to Contemporary Mexican Architecture], Carlos Lazo [and/or] Richard Grove, Congreso Panamericano de Arquitectos, Espacios, Mexico City 1952. . Mexique précolombien [Pre-Columbian Mexico], text by Paul Rivet, Editions Ides et Calendes, Neuchatel 1954. . German ed.: Alt-Mexiko, Reich, München 1954. . James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years, foreword by Simone de Beauvoir, text by Verna B. Carleton, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York 1965, ISBN 1111804478. Archive-url. Au pays des visages, 1938–1968: Trente ans d'art et de littérature à travers la caméra de Gisèle Freund, Freund with Pierre Gaudibert, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1968, w/o ISBN. Le monde et ma camera, memoir, Denoël, Paris 1970, ISBN 9782207257920 (2006 ed.). English ed.: The World and My Camera, The Dial Press, New York 1974, ISBN 080379732X. Photographie et societé, revised and expanded edition of her dissertation, Seuil (Coll. Points), Paris 1974, ISBN 202000660X. English ed., US: Photography & Society, David R. Godine, Boston 1980, ISBN 0879232501, English ed., UK: Gordon Fraser, London 1980, ISBN 0860920496. Memoires de l'œil [Memories of the Eye], Seuil, Paris 1977, ISBN 2020046474. (Also published in German the same year.) Portfolio: Au pays des visages [In the Landscape of Faces], ed. of 36 signed copies with ten portraits, Lunn Gallery/Graphics International, 1978. Trois jours avec Joyce , Denoël, Paris 1982, ISBN 2207228061. English ed., US: Three Days with Joyce, Persea, New York 1985, ISBN 9780892550968. Archive-url. English ed., Europe: Van Gennep, Amsterdam 1985, ISBN 9060126637. Gisèle Freund, Photographien (und Erinnerungen), with autobiographical texts, foreword by Christian Caujolle, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, ISBN 3888141605. French ed.: Itinéraires, Albin Michel, Paris 1985, ISBN 9782226024718. English ed.: Gisèle Freund, Photographer, Abrams, New York 1985, ISBN 9780810909397. Gisèle Freund. Poetry of the Portrait: Photographs of Writers and Artists, Engl. ed. by Roger W. Benner, preface by Freund, Schirmer Art Books (Masters of the Camera), Munich 1989, ISBN 9783888148903. Gisèle Freund: itinéraires. Catalogue de l'œuvre photographique, Musée national d'art moderne, ed. by Alain Sayag, complete catalogue by Hans Puttnies, Ed. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991, ISBN 9782858506460. Gisèle Freund, Portrait. Entretiens avec Rauda Jamis , interviews with Rauda Jamis, Des Femmes, Paris 1991, ISBN 9782721004222. (Also published in German, 1993).

Books on Gisèle Freund

(Original edition in Catalan)

Film and television The 1996 documentary Paris Was a Woman features interviews with Gisèle Freund as she recollects her experiences in Paris during the 1930s.

1979 Zeugen des Jahrhunderts: Gisèle Freund [Witnesses of the Century].

2019 Gisèle Freund, portrait intime d'une photographe visionnaire, Director Teri Wehn-Damisch.