Gisèle Freund

photographer

French b. 19 December 1908, Berlin, Germany^[1] d. 31 March 2000, Paris, France^[1] active 1930–2000

Gisèle Freund (born Gisela Freund; 1908–2000) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist renowned for her documentary photography and portraits of prominent writers and artists. A socialist activist who fled Nazi Germany in 1933, she became a central figure in the Parisian intellectual scene, befriending figures like Walter Benjamin, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. She pioneered the use of color film (Kodachrome and Agfacolor) for candid portraiture and was one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in sociology at the Sorbonne. Her work is characterized by an intimate, non-retouched style that captured the 'landscape of the human face.' In 1985, she became the first photographer honored with a retrospective at the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris.

• portraiture
• documentary photography
• social history