Fembio Special: Famous Lesbians
Gisèle Freund
(Gisela Sophia Freund [real name]; Girix [pseudonym])
born on December 19, 1908 in Berlin, the German Empire
died on March 31, 2000 in Paris, France
Franco-German photographer and sociologist
25th anniversary of her death on March 31, 2025
Biography
Her grandfather had made a fortune at the end of the 19th century with the invention of the culotte for the ladies who had started to ride bicycles; her father was more inclined towards the aesthetic. Gisèle Freund enjoyed a tolerant upbringing in an educated and wealthy Jewish family, yet she rebelled early on by, for example, secretly joining the Socialist Youth while still a schoolgirl. On May 1, 1932 and soon after she started studying sociology (with Mannheim and Horkheimer) in Frankfurt, she used the Leica her father had given her as a graduation present to photograph the last free mass rally that was held before the Nazis came to power.
In 1931, she spent a semester at the Sorbonne to research for her doctoral thesis, La photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle (t: Photography in 19th-century France). Later her dissertation was revised, expanded and published as Photographie et societé (1974; English edition Photography & Society, 1980) – a political and sociological analysis of photography now considered a standard work. She returned to Paris in 1933 after the activities of her socialist group of students in Frankfurt had been reported – she had been warned in time and was thus one of the first emigrants to leave Germany.
Her encounter with Adrienne Monnier, who owned a bookshop in Paris where the most important luminaries of the time met, developed into a lifelong close friendship. Freund loved literature and writers, knew their works and was fascinated by the “landscape of the human face.”
In just a few years, she created around 80 portraits of writers in natural light and with no retouching, mainly employing the newly developed technique of color photography. Among these renowned portraits are those of difficult personalities such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
She took these photographs only for her own pleasure; she earned her living as a photojournalist, initially writing the articles herself and publishing them under a pseudonym. Her first assignment for the American magazine Life took her (hitchhiking and staying in youth hostels) through the slums of northern England. She reported on the closure of mines and the poverty of unemployed families. (“I wanted to become a sociologist because I was concerned about the many social problems. I became a photographer out of necessity.”)
World War II interrupted her work; she fled Paris by bicycle. In 1942 she accepted the invitation of Victoria Ocampo (an Argentine matron of the arts) to come to South America. From Buenos Aires, she traveled throughout Latin America, and her reportages appeared in American and European magazines. After the war ended, she returned to France with three tons of food and clothing for her French friends. The distribution list includes famous names (Cocteau received three pounds of coffee, Dubuffet a sausage, etc.).
Back in Paris, she was hired by the famous photographer Robert Capa for the Magnum photo agency. The work included sessions involving critical image analysis, which was a new experience for her. She took on the Latin America section and many reportages followed, including her scandal-ridden photo coverage of Evita Peron (1950).
The early 1960s marked the beginning of her rise to fame. The first edition of her dissertation was published in German, and her broader rediscovery was initiated by the student movement. Countless exhibitions followed – at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977 and, as a special highlight, at the Centre Pompidou in 1991 where an entire floor was dedicated to her photos. Alongside Lotte Jacobi, she was the most important photographer of the previous century.
(Text from 2001; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025. Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
At the end of her working life, Gisèle Freund confessed “that (she) had once believed (she) could combat prejudices and clichés and contribute to international understanding through the language of images. But (she) had been forced to recognize that images can also incite hatred, through the way they are used.”
I did not claim to create works of art or invent new forms, but to make visible what was close to my heart: people, their joys and sufferings, their hopes and fears. (Gisèle Freund)
If you hold the rights to one or more of the images on this page and object to its/their appearance here, please contact Fembio.
