Reportages and Portraits, on the occasion of her 100th birthday
Willy-Brandt-Haus
Gisèle Freund: Selbstportrait mit Kamera, Mexiko Stadt, 1950
1950 © Dr. Marita Ruiter, Galerie Clairefontaine
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The photographer Gisèle Freund would have turned one hundred this year, on 12/19/2008.
She figures most prominently among the photographers of our time – and is famous for the picture reportages, which she produced during the 1930s for the magazines Life and Time in Europe and later in South America; for her portraiture work in which she, arguably, collected some of the most significant writers, artists, and philosopher of her time; and, finally, for her sound literary contributions to the history and theory of photography.
On view in the exhibit at the Willy-Brandt-Haus are one hundred samples of her portraiture work, impressive in their extraordinary familiarity: Walter Benjamin, James Joyce, Jean-Paul Sartre, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, and many more, most of them taken in color, and, in many cases, the only existing color portrait of her subjects; and in addition pictures from the 1935 “First International Writers’ Congress in Defense of Culture” that was held in Paris, where Gisèle Freund participated as a student. The artist has written an account of her memories about all these photographs, thus creating a unique photo-journal of a world traveller through art and literature.
Artist(s)
Gisèle Freund
Duration of the exhibition
29.10.2008 - 18.01.2009
Vernissage
28.10.2008, 19.30 h
Opening times
Di-So 12-18 h
Location
Willy-Brandt-Haus
Stresemannstraße 28
10963 Berlin
T 0049 30 25993787
Public transport connections
U Hallesches Tor;
Bus M41
Map:
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