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©Claire Yaffa
Born in Brooklyn, 1929, to working class Jewish immigrants from Belarus, Freed originally had ambitions to become an artist, however in 1954 he was to study photography at the New School under the esteemed Harpers Bazaar Art Director, Alexey Brodovitch. The photography he produced from this time was imbued with a uniquely humanitarian vision. Exhibited here, as both vintage and modern prints, are images drawn from two of Freed’s most significant American projects, Black in White America (1964-1965) and Police Work (1972-1979) as well as documents reflecting his lifetime interest in his Jewish heritage. Alongside these are photographs that record daily life in America, from Vietnam War protesters and Harlem fashion shows, to street life in Greenwich Village and weddings in Little Italy.
Shortly after his studies, Freed embarked on a two year journey, hitchhiking through Europe & North Africa. The resulting images were published in Freed’s first book Jews of Amsterdam (1959) & a solo exhibition in the Netherlands. It was whilst on this journey that Freed’s interest in civil rights developed, after he photographed a black American soldier at the Berlin Wall and was shocked at the contrast between the man’s loyalty to the West and the struggle he perceived back home for basic civil rights.
Returning to America in the early 1960s, Freed embarked on a project which was to define his career; the documentation of Harlem and the Deep South, illustrating the inequalities between being black or white in 1960s America. The astounding images, many selected for this exhibition, including a women entering a ‘whites only’ launderette in New Orleans and the tenderness between two impoverished sisters in South Carolina, were published in Freed’s landmark book Black in White America (1967) and were to propel his photographic career. Freed would later photograph pioneering civil rights figure Dr Martin Luther King, the 1963 March on Washington and the rallies performed by the Congress of Racial equality.
Also included in this exhibition are celebrated images from Police Work, a project started by Freed in the early 1970s as a counterweight to what he saw as the police victimization by young middle-class antiwar protestors. Freed wanted to examine the police up-close and his intimate portrayal depicts neither stereotypical thugs nor saintly guardians, but harassed, badly-paid working class men simply trying to feed their families and negotiate violent terrain. Images such as a policewoman playing with local kids in Harlem, and a police officer relaxing in his pool with his family, demonstrate Freed’s ability to tackle subjects with humanity and compassion. A book of the work was published in 1980 and shown at The Photographers' Gallery, London in 1973 under the title ‘The Spectre of Violence’ – a dramatic life-sized restaging involving entering the gallery through a black curtain and the discovery of a ‘corpse’ at the bottom of stairwell.
Freed’s Jewish heritage has been a reoccurring, lifetime theme and his coverage of the Yom Kippur War and events in Israel in the late 1960s deservedly granted him Cornell Capa’s epithet ‘The Concerned Photographer’. Freed published numerous bodies of work on the Jewish community in countries such as the Netherlands and post-war Germany and the images included in this exhibition feature of Freed’s continual documentation of Jewish life in his American birthplace; Hassidic weddings, Jewish schoolboys and Brooklyn synagogues.
Leonard Freed produced significant essays on Poland, Asian immigration in England, North Sea oil development, and Spain after General Franco. He shot four films including The Negro In America (1968) and Joey Goes to Wigstock (1992) and his work was widely published in major magazines such as Life, Look, Fortune, Paris-Match and Sunday Times. He died in Garrison, New York, on 30 November 2006.
A wider selection of Freed’s photographic career is currently touring as the 230 piece exhibition Worldview curated by Bill Ewing, Lausanne, and published by Steidl (2007).
Awards
1978 New York State Grant for the Arts
1980 National Endowment for the Arts
Exhibitions (selection)
2011
'View York - Nine Perceptions', DAI Tübingen, Germany (until February 2012)
Io amo Italia - Fondazione Stelline, Milan, Italy (until January 2012)
An American in Deutschland, German Historical Institute, Washington DC, USA
'View York - Nine Perceptions', Galerie °Clair, Munich, Germany
Worldview, Museum of Photography, Charleroi, Belgium
An american in Deutschland, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, US
2010
Black in White America - The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
One Way to Holland - Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Engaged Observers - The J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles, USA
2009
Black in White America - Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York City, USA
2008
Weltanschauung - C|O International Forum for Visual Dialogues, Berlin, Germany
All I Have To Offer - Domeischel Gallery, New York City, USA
2007
Worldview - Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
A Memorial Retrospective - Leica Gallery, New York City, USA
Worldview - Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, Netherlands
2006
Dance of the Faithful - The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, USA
2004
Made In Germany - Galerie Argus Fotokunst, Berlin, Germany
2003
Nude and Naked - Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, Paris, France
Women Wearing Only Light - Radiant Light Gallery, Portland, USA
2001
GAC Gallery, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, New York, USA
2000
Black in White America - Lee Gallery, Winchester, Maine, USA
1999
Galerie Mistral, Montreal, Canada
Esther Woerdehoff Gallery, Paris, France
1998
Leica Gallery, New York, USA
Vision Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel
1996
Retrospective: The Photographs of Leonard Freed - Leica Gallery, New York, USA
1994
292 Gallery, New York, New York, USA
Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA
1993
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy
1991
Alinari, Florence, Italy
1989
San Daniele del Friuli, Friuli, Italy
1987
Galerie Municipale du Château d'Eau, Toulouse, France
1980
Museum Folkwang, Essen
1973
Trapani, Sicily, Italy; The Photographers' Gallery, London, UK
1971
Jewish Museum, New York, USA
Publications (selection)
1958 Joden van Amsterdam, Netherlands: De Bezige Bij
1965 Deutsche Juden Heute, Germany: Rütten & Loening Verlag
1968 Black in White America, United States: Grossman Publishers
1970 Made in Germany, USA: Grossman Publishers
1971 Leonard Freed’s Germany, London: Thames & Hudson
1980 Police Work, USA: Simon & Schuster
1984 La Danse des Fidèles, France: Editions du Chêne
1991 Leonard Freed: Photographs 1954-1990, UK: Cornerhouse/Editions Nathan, New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
1997 Amsterdam: The Sixties, USA: Focus Publishing. Netherlands: Uitgeverij Focus
2004 Another Life, Netherlands: ABP Public Affairs
2006 VeniceVenetia, Rome: Postcart Edizioni
2007 Leonard Freed: Worldview with William A. Ewing, Wim van Sinderen, Nathalie Herschdorfer.
Lausanne: Steidl/Musée de L'Elysée
2009 Indonesiers in Holland 1958-1962, Zwolle, Netherlands: d'jongeHond
2010 Black in White America, USA: Getty Publications (2nd edition)
2010 Engaged Observers, USA. Getty Publications
2011 'View York - Nine Perceptions', Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld
Leonard Freed kam 1929 als Sohn jüdischer Einwanderer aus Weißrussland in Brooklyn zur Welt. Entgegen seiner eigentlichen Ambition, ein Leben freier Künstler zu führen, trat er 1954 das Studium der Fotografie an der New Yorker New School unter Alexey Brodovitch an. Nach dessen Abschluss machte sich Freed auf, zwei Jahre lang durch Europa und Nordafrika zu trampen. Die bei dieser Reise entstandenen Fotografien bildeten die Basis zu Freeds erster Publikation Jews of Amsterdam, wie auch zu einer Soloausstellung in Amsterdam. Bereits vor seiner Rückkehr in die Vereinigten Staaten beschäftige ihn die Bürgerrechtsbewegung; sein Interesse daran wurde entfacht, als er eine afroamerikanischen Wachsoldaten an der Berliner Mauer ablichtete: Freed entsetzte, daß dieser Mann in seiner Heimat Amerika um seine Grundrechte zu kämpfen habe, während er hier fürs Vaterland sein Leben riskierte.
Anfang der 60er Jahre begann Freed das Projekt Black in White America – gleichzeitig Buchtitel der Veröffentlichung von 1967 -, welches seine Karriere nachhaltig prägte. Freed dokumentierte hierin Harlem und den Tiefen Süden und machte sehr eindringlich die damals vorherrschende Ungleichheit zwischen den Ethnien sichtbar. Indem er etwa einen „Whites Only“ Waschsalon in New Orleans oder ein verarmtes Geschwisterpaar aus South Carolina ablichtete. Dieses Engagement gipfelte später in Freeds Aufnahmen von Dr. Martin Luther King und dem March on Washington 1963.
Es folgte in den 1970er Jahren das Projekt Police Work, mit dem Freed eine Gegendarstellung zur Kritik weisser middleclass Anti-Kriegs-Demonstranten am Wesen des Polizeiapparates gelang. Es entstanden Portraits, die weder den stereotypischen Schlagstockschwinger noch den machtgierigen Schutzpatron zeigten, sondern ausnahmslos mit Problemen belästigte, schlecht bezahlte Polizeibeamte, bemüht darum, mit ihrem Beruf Verbrechen zu verhindern und ihre Familien zu ernähren. Freed nahm Bilder auf, die etwa eine Polizistin beim Herumalbern mit Kinder in Harlem zeigen oder einen Polizisten, der mit den Seinen im Swimmingpool ausspannt. Die Aufnahmen von Police Work wurden 1980 in dem gleichnamigen Fotoband veröffentlicht aber bereits 1973 in der Londoner Photographers‘ Gallery unter dem Titel The Spectre of Violence ausgestellt.
Ein Leben lang studierte Freed mit seiner Kamera und seinem menschlich mitfühlenden Blick die Facetten des jüdischen Lebens. So existieren Fotostrecken über Juden in Holland und Deutschland wie auch solche aus Amerika, die chassidische Hochzeiten, jüdische Schüler und Synagogen in Brooklyn abbilden. Aufgrund seiner Berichterstattung aus dem Israel der späten 1960er Jahre bis hin zum Yom-Kippur-Krieg bekam Freed von Cornell Capa den Beinamen „The Concerned Photographer“.
Auf literarischem Gebiet tat sich Freed hervor mit vielbeachteten Aufsätzen über Polen, die asiatische Einwanderung nach England, Entwicklung der Ölförderung in der Nordsee und das Spanien nach Franco. Freed drehte insgesamt vier Filme, u.a. The Negro in America und Joey Goes to Wigstock. Magazine wie Life, Look, Fortune, Paris-Match und Sunday Times veröffentlichten Freeds Werke.
Leonard Freed verstarb am 30. November 2006 in Garrison, New York.
Ab 6.12.2011 zeigt °CLAIR Galerie Fotografien von Leonard Freed im Rahmen einer Solo-Show. Enthalten sind auch eine Vielzahl von Vintageprints, Fotografien aus zwei von Freeds signifikantesten US-amerikanischen Projekten – Black in White America (1964-65) und Police Work (1972-79), sowie viele Aufnahmen, in denen sich Freed mit seiner jüdischen Abstammung, dem Alltag in den USA und dem Vietnamkrieg beschäftigt.
©Claire Yaffa
Born in Brooklyn, 1929, to working class Jewish immigrants from Belarus, Freed originally had ambitions to become an artist, however in 1954 he was to study photography at the New School under the esteemed Harpers Bazaar Art Director, Alexey Brodovitch. The photography he produced from this time was imbued with a uniquely humanitarian vision. Exhibited here, as both vintage and modern prints, are images drawn from two of Freed’s most significant American projects, Black in White America (1964-1965) and Police Work (1972-1979) as well as documents reflecting his lifetime interest in his Jewish heritage. Alongside these are photographs that record daily life in America, from Vietnam War protesters and Harlem fashion shows, to street life in Greenwich Village and weddings in Little Italy.
Shortly after his studies, Freed embarked on a two year journey, hitchhiking through Europe & North Africa. The resulting images were published in Freed’s first book Jews of Amsterdam (1959) & a solo exhibition in the Netherlands. It was whilst on this journey that Freed’s interest in civil rights developed, after he photographed a black American soldier at the Berlin Wall and was shocked at the contrast between the man’s loyalty to the West and the struggle he perceived back home for basic civil rights.
Returning to America in the early 1960s, Freed embarked on a project which was to define his career; the documentation of Harlem and the Deep South, illustrating the inequalities between being black or white in 1960s America. The astounding images, many selected for this exhibition, including a women entering a ‘whites only’ launderette in New Orleans and the tenderness between two impoverished sisters in South Carolina, were published in Freed’s landmark book Black in White America (1967) and were to propel his photographic career. Freed would later photograph pioneering civil rights figure Dr Martin Luther King, the 1963 March on Washington and the rallies performed by the Congress of Racial equality.
Also included in this exhibition are celebrated images from Police Work, a project started by Freed in the early 1970s as a counterweight to what he saw as the police victimization by young middle-class antiwar protestors. Freed wanted to examine the police up-close and his intimate portrayal depicts neither stereotypical thugs nor saintly guardians, but harassed, badly-paid working class men simply trying to feed their families and negotiate violent terrain. Images such as a policewoman playing with local kids in Harlem, and a police officer relaxing in his pool with his family, demonstrate Freed’s ability to tackle subjects with humanity and compassion. A book of the work was published in 1980 and shown at The Photographers' Gallery, London in 1973 under the title ‘The Spectre of Violence’ – a dramatic life-sized restaging involving entering the gallery through a black curtain and the discovery of a ‘corpse’ at the bottom of stairwell.
Freed’s Jewish heritage has been a reoccurring, lifetime theme and his coverage of the Yom Kippur War and events in Israel in the late 1960s deservedly granted him Cornell Capa’s epithet ‘The Concerned Photographer’. Freed published numerous bodies of work on the Jewish community in countries such as the Netherlands and post-war Germany and the images included in this exhibition feature of Freed’s continual documentation of Jewish life in his American birthplace; Hassidic weddings, Jewish schoolboys and Brooklyn synagogues.
Leonard Freed produced significant essays on Poland, Asian immigration in England, North Sea oil development, and Spain after General Franco. He shot four films including The Negro In America (1968) and Joey Goes to Wigstock (1992) and his work was widely published in major magazines such as Life, Look, Fortune, Paris-Match and Sunday Times. He died in Garrison, New York, on 30 November 2006.
A wider selection of Freed’s photographic career is currently touring as the 230 piece exhibition Worldview curated by Bill Ewing, Lausanne, and published by Steidl (2007).
Awards
1978 New York State Grant for the Arts
1980 National Endowment for the Arts
Exhibitions (selection)
2011
'View York - Nine Perceptions', DAI Tübingen, Germany (until February 2012)
Io amo Italia - Fondazione Stelline, Milan, Italy (until January 2012)
An American in Deutschland, German Historical Institute, Washington DC, USA
'View York - Nine Perceptions', Galerie °Clair, Munich, Germany
Worldview, Museum of Photography, Charleroi, Belgium
An american in Deutschland, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, US
2010
Black in White America - The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
One Way to Holland - Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Engaged Observers - The J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles, USA
2009
Black in White America - Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York City, USA
2008
Weltanschauung - C|O International Forum for Visual Dialogues, Berlin, Germany
All I Have To Offer - Domeischel Gallery, New York City, USA
2007
Worldview - Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
A Memorial Retrospective - Leica Gallery, New York City, USA
Worldview - Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, Netherlands
2006
Dance of the Faithful - The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, USA
2004
Made In Germany - Galerie Argus Fotokunst, Berlin, Germany
2003
Nude and Naked - Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, Paris, France
Women Wearing Only Light - Radiant Light Gallery, Portland, USA
2001
GAC Gallery, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, New York, USA
2000
Black in White America - Lee Gallery, Winchester, Maine, USA
1999
Galerie Mistral, Montreal, Canada
Esther Woerdehoff Gallery, Paris, France
1998
Leica Gallery, New York, USA
Vision Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel
1996
Retrospective: The Photographs of Leonard Freed - Leica Gallery, New York, USA
1994
292 Gallery, New York, New York, USA
Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA
1993
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy
1991
Alinari, Florence, Italy
1989
San Daniele del Friuli, Friuli, Italy
1987
Galerie Municipale du Château d'Eau, Toulouse, France
1980
Museum Folkwang, Essen
1973
Trapani, Sicily, Italy; The Photographers' Gallery, London, UK
1971
Jewish Museum, New York, USA
Publications (selection)
1958 Joden van Amsterdam, Netherlands: De Bezige Bij
1965 Deutsche Juden Heute, Germany: Rütten & Loening Verlag
1968 Black in White America, United States: Grossman Publishers
1970 Made in Germany, USA: Grossman Publishers
1971 Leonard Freed’s Germany, London: Thames & Hudson
1980 Police Work, USA: Simon & Schuster
1984 La Danse des Fidèles, France: Editions du Chêne
1991 Leonard Freed: Photographs 1954-1990, UK: Cornerhouse/Editions Nathan, New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
1997 Amsterdam: The Sixties, USA: Focus Publishing. Netherlands: Uitgeverij Focus
2004 Another Life, Netherlands: ABP Public Affairs
2006 VeniceVenetia, Rome: Postcart Edizioni
2007 Leonard Freed: Worldview with William A. Ewing, Wim van Sinderen, Nathalie Herschdorfer.
Lausanne: Steidl/Musée de L'Elysée
2009 Indonesiers in Holland 1958-1962, Zwolle, Netherlands: d'jongeHond
2010 Black in White America, USA: Getty Publications (2nd edition)
2010 Engaged Observers, USA. Getty Publications
2011 'View York - Nine Perceptions', Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld
Leonard Freed kam 1929 als Sohn jüdischer Einwanderer aus Weißrussland in Brooklyn zur Welt. Entgegen seiner eigentlichen Ambition, ein Leben freier Künstler zu führen, trat er 1954 das Studium der Fotografie an der New Yorker New School unter Alexey Brodovitch an. Nach dessen Abschluss machte sich Freed auf, zwei Jahre lang durch Europa und Nordafrika zu trampen. Die bei dieser Reise entstandenen Fotografien bildeten die Basis zu Freeds erster Publikation Jews of Amsterdam, wie auch zu einer Soloausstellung in Amsterdam. Bereits vor seiner Rückkehr in die Vereinigten Staaten beschäftige ihn die Bürgerrechtsbewegung; sein Interesse daran wurde entfacht, als er eine afroamerikanischen Wachsoldaten an der Berliner Mauer ablichtete: Freed entsetzte, daß dieser Mann in seiner Heimat Amerika um seine Grundrechte zu kämpfen habe, während er hier fürs Vaterland sein Leben riskierte.
Anfang der 60er Jahre begann Freed das Projekt Black in White America – gleichzeitig Buchtitel der Veröffentlichung von 1967 -, welches seine Karriere nachhaltig prägte. Freed dokumentierte hierin Harlem und den Tiefen Süden und machte sehr eindringlich die damals vorherrschende Ungleichheit zwischen den Ethnien sichtbar. Indem er etwa einen „Whites Only“ Waschsalon in New Orleans oder ein verarmtes Geschwisterpaar aus South Carolina ablichtete. Dieses Engagement gipfelte später in Freeds Aufnahmen von Dr. Martin Luther King und dem March on Washington 1963.
Es folgte in den 1970er Jahren das Projekt Police Work, mit dem Freed eine Gegendarstellung zur Kritik weisser middleclass Anti-Kriegs-Demonstranten am Wesen des Polizeiapparates gelang. Es entstanden Portraits, die weder den stereotypischen Schlagstockschwinger noch den machtgierigen Schutzpatron zeigten, sondern ausnahmslos mit Problemen belästigte, schlecht bezahlte Polizeibeamte, bemüht darum, mit ihrem Beruf Verbrechen zu verhindern und ihre Familien zu ernähren. Freed nahm Bilder auf, die etwa eine Polizistin beim Herumalbern mit Kinder in Harlem zeigen oder einen Polizisten, der mit den Seinen im Swimmingpool ausspannt. Die Aufnahmen von Police Work wurden 1980 in dem gleichnamigen Fotoband veröffentlicht aber bereits 1973 in der Londoner Photographers‘ Gallery unter dem Titel The Spectre of Violence ausgestellt.
Ein Leben lang studierte Freed mit seiner Kamera und seinem menschlich mitfühlenden Blick die Facetten des jüdischen Lebens. So existieren Fotostrecken über Juden in Holland und Deutschland wie auch solche aus Amerika, die chassidische Hochzeiten, jüdische Schüler und Synagogen in Brooklyn abbilden. Aufgrund seiner Berichterstattung aus dem Israel der späten 1960er Jahre bis hin zum Yom-Kippur-Krieg bekam Freed von Cornell Capa den Beinamen „The Concerned Photographer“.
Auf literarischem Gebiet tat sich Freed hervor mit vielbeachteten Aufsätzen über Polen, die asiatische Einwanderung nach England, Entwicklung der Ölförderung in der Nordsee und das Spanien nach Franco. Freed drehte insgesamt vier Filme, u.a. The Negro in America und Joey Goes to Wigstock. Magazine wie Life, Look, Fortune, Paris-Match und Sunday Times veröffentlichten Freeds Werke.
Leonard Freed verstarb am 30. November 2006 in Garrison, New York.
Ab 6.12.2011 zeigt °CLAIR Galerie Fotografien von Leonard Freed im Rahmen einer Solo-Show. Enthalten sind auch eine Vielzahl von Vintageprints, Fotografien aus zwei von Freeds signifikantesten US-amerikanischen Projekten – Black in White America (1964-65) und Police Work (1972-79), sowie viele Aufnahmen, in denen sich Freed mit seiner jüdischen Abstammung, dem Alltag in den USA und dem Vietnamkrieg beschäftigt.