Gisela Gisèle Freund

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/freund-gisele

Freund was born into a wealthy Jewish family in the Schöneberg district of Berlin in 1912. Her father, Julius Freund (1870–1941), a textile merchant with a passion for collecting nineteenth and twentieth-century German art, introduced Gisèle to the work of Karl Blossfeldt (1865–1932), a botanist who explored the formal elements of beauty in plants through photography. Her mother Clara (née Dresel), died in 1946. Upon graduation from high school her father presented his daughter with a Leica camera, which Gisèle later said became “her companion all her life.” In 1931 Freund began studying sociology and the history of art at the world-famous Institute for Social Research of Frankfurt University, where her teachers included Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), and her tutor, Norbert Elias (1897–1990), one of the leading social theorists of the day.

Gisèle Freund died in Paris on March 31, 2000.

http://www.gisele-freund.com/

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gis%C3%A8le_Freund

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gis%C3%A8le_Freund

Gisèle Freund (born Gisela Freund; November 19, 1908 Schöneberg District, Berlin – March 31, 2000, Paris) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book, Photographie et société (1974), is about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium in the age of technological reproduction. In 1977, she became President of the French Association of Photographers, and in 1981, she took the official portrait of French President François Mitterrand.

She was made Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1982 and Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, the highest decoration in France, in 1983. In 1991, she became the first photographer to be honored with a retrospective at the Musée National d’art Moderne in Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou).

Freund's major contributions to photography include using the Leica Camera (with its 36 frames) for documentary reportage and her early experimentation with Kodachrome and 35 mm Agfacolor, which allowed her to develop a "uniquely candid portraiture style" that distinguishes her in 20th century photography.[2]

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

Freund was born into a textile merchant family on 19 December 1908 to Julius and Clara (nee Dressel) Freund, a wealthy Jewish couple in the Schoneberg district of Berlin.

Her father, Julius Freund, was a keen art collector with an interest in the work of photographer Karl Blossfeldt, whose close-up studies explored the forms of natural objects. Freund's father bought Gisèle her first camera, a Voigtländer 6x9 in 1925 and a Leica camera as a present for her graduation in 1929.

In Freund's obituary for The New York Times, Suzanne Daley writes, "[Freund] specialized in conveying the attitude of her subjects. She focused on hands, body posture and clothing. Reviewing an exhibition of her life's work in 1979, Hilton Kramer wrote in The New York Times that she excelled in 'brilliant documentation rather than originality.' In a 1996 interview, Ms. Freund said she read her subjects' work and often spent hours discussing their books with them before taking a portrait." Indeed, it was Freund's ability to connect with writers and artists—especially the famously difficult James Joyce—that gave her the ability to photograph them with their guards down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/01/arts/gisele-freund-is-dead-at-91-...

Gisele Freund Is Dead at 91; Photographed Paris Writers

By SUZANNE DALEY

Published: April 1, 2000

PARIS, March 31— Gisele Freund, the German-born photographer who was best known for her portraits of France's literary elite and was a founding member of Magnum Photo Agency, died today in Paris. She was 91.

Ms. Freund was one of Europe's most prominent photographers and a pillar among French feminist intellectuals after fleeing Nazi Germany and settling in Paris in the 1930's.

In the course of her long career, she went on about 80 photographic assignments around the world, mainly for Time and Life. But she is most noted for being in a lot of places with a lot of famous people.

She captured a windblown Andre Malraux on a Paris rooftop, Boris Pasternak, Aldous Huxley and Andre Gide at a congress for the defense of culture; Walter Benjamin sitting on a bench in the Bibliotheque Nationale; Vladimir Nabokov, Michel Leiris, Henri Michaux and Jean Paulhan in the editorial offices of the magazine Mesures and James Joyce playing the piano for his son, Giorgio.

She specialized in conveying the attitude of her subjects. She focused on hands, body posture and clothing. Reviewing an exhibition of her life's work in 1979, Hilton Kramer wrote in The New York Times that she excelled in brilliant documentation rather than originality.

In a 1996 interview, Ms. Freund said she read her subjects' work and often spent hours discussing their books with them before taking a portrait.

This was essential to gaining their confidence, she said of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Malraux and Breton. I tell many young photographers to do the same thing, but so often they don't want to read about their subjects, they just want to take pictures. For me, at least, studying my subjects first and knowing them personally was essential to taking a good picture.

Born in Berlin in 1908 to wealthy Jewish parents who collected art, Ms. Freund was given her first camera at the age of 12. As a university student studying sociology in Frankfurt, she became a political activist protesting the rise of Hitler's National Socialism. In 1933 she fled Germany, escaping just as the police were about to arrest her.

She arrived in Paris carrying only a small suitcase, a camera and some film recording the early stages of Nazi violence. She pursued her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, where her thesis on photography in France in the 19th century met with some skepticism because photography was not considered a serious study.

She used her camera to make a living. But what began as economic necessity rapidly developed into a serious vocation. Although still living the life of a refugee who had become stateless, by 1936 she had scored a double triumph.

Her dissertation was published as a book by Adrienne Monnier, the Paris bookseller who stood at the center of French literary life in the period between the two world wars. And the first of her picture stories was published by the new Life magazine.

Ms. Monnier, whom Ms. Freund met while browsing in her Left Bank bookshop, became her lifelong mentor and companion, introducing her to the Parisian intellectual set and encouraging her to pursue photography.

Her use of color clashed with the prevailing style of retouched black-and-white studio portraits, but she persevered, saying that color was closer to life.

The Nazi invasion of France in 1940 interrupted her career and she fled again, first to southern France and then to Argentina, where she worked until the war's end. In later years Ms. Freund became well known in her adopted France, winning the National Grand Prize for Photography in 1980. She took the official photograph of Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist, at his presidential inauguration in 1981.

But she gave up photography in the mid-1980's, saying she wanted to spend her time reading. Her modest Paris apartment did not have a single photograph on the walls, but there were piles of books.

In a statement, President Jacques Chirac praised her today as one of the world's greatest photographers.

She was able, better than anyone, to reveal the essence of beings through their expressions, he said.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin hailed Ms. Freund as an unparalleled sociologist and reporter who traveled the world with a generous and lucid approach to places and events faraway.

Her agent, Nina Beskow, said that Ms. Freund had been briefly married for paper reasons. There were no immediate survivors.

Ms. Freund's portrait of Malraux on the rooftop -- wrapped in a trench coat with a cigarette dangling from his mouth -- is among her most best-known photographs. But when the portrait was adapted for a French postage stamp, the cigarette was famously airbrushed out, in a nod to the times.

Photos: Virginia Woolf in 1939 and Henri Matisse in 1948 through the lens of Gisele Freund, the photographer born in Germany who was hailed for her portraits of France's literary elite. She said she read her subjects' work and often spent hours discussing their books with them. This was essential to gaining their confidence, she said. She added, For me, at least, studying my subjects first and knowing them personally was essential to taking a good picture. (Photographs by Gisele Freund); Gisele Freund (Associated Press, 1995)