Leonard Freed photographs
Online Access
Available digital items: https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/collections/NA004001
Abstract
This collection contains 85 photographs by Leonard Freed, an American photojournalist known for his coverage of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. The photographs include candid depictions of underrepresented American communities, the civil rights movement, and European street scenes.
Dates
- 1954-2004
Creator
- Freed, Leonard (1929-10-23-2006-11-29) (Photographer, Person)
- Magnum Photos (Contractor, Organization)
Extent
.7 Cubic Feet (15 folders and 1 oversized box)
Language of Materials
English
Scope and Contents
Leonard Freed was an American photojournalist known for his coverage of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. This collection contains 85 photographs that cover a variety of subjects from Freed’s career, including depictions of underrepresented American communities, the civil rights movement, and European street scenes.
The collection is arranged alphabetically, and the folder titles were assigned by New School Archive staff based on the photographed topic and/or geographic location. Freed lived in Europe in his early career. Researchers will find candid photographs of France, Germany, and Italy in this collection, although Italy is the better represented of the three geographical areas as the corresponding folders contain 22 photographs.
Freed published several books of his work. The folder Black in White America contains 4 photographs that were later included in the publication of the same title. Most notable in this folder is a photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr. seated in a convertible car, greeted by passersby upon his return to the United States after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Apart from a number of photographs from Europe, a large number of which were taken in Italy, the collection mainly focuses on Freed’s work in New York City. The folders Exteriors and Interiors refer to the physical location of the photographed scene. For example, Exteriors includes photographs of playgrounds, parks, subway stations, cityscapes, and street scenes, such as people celebrating the Brooklyn Dodgers winning the World Series in 1955. Photographs in the Interiors folder depict individuals and gatherings indoors, including a series documenting a 1960s office party and images of stockbrokers on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. Freed’s New York work in this collection also includes photographs of drag and queer people in public spaces. Queer subjects are represented in his coverage of the 1996 Dragapalooza event at Tompkins Square Park. Researchers will also find images of gay couples and queer people in both the Exteriors and Interiors folders. Finally, researchers should be advised that one photograph in the Harlem folder is of a crime scene in which the presumably deceased victim is clearly visible.
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research use. Please contact archivist@newschool.edu for appointment.
Conditions Governing Use
To publish images of material from this collection, permission must be obtained in writing from the New School Archives and Special Collections. Please contact archivist@newschool.edu.
In addition, reproduction of Freed's work done for Magnum Photography may require permission to reproduce and may be subject to a fee. Contact licensingall@magnumphotos.com for more.
Biographical note
Leonard Freed (born October 23, 1929, Brooklyn, New York - died November 30, 2006, Garrison, New York) was an American photojournalist known for his photo essays on society and culture. Freed’s interest in photography began in the early 1950s during a trip to the Netherlands. In 1954, he returned to the United States where he took photography courses offered by noted Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch at The New School for Social Research.
By 1958 Freed had published his first book of photographs, an account of post-World War II Jewish life in the Netherlands titled Joden van Amsterdam, married Brigitte Klück, and moved to Amsterdam. In the 1960s, Freed embarked on a freelance career in Europe and the United States with his wife by his side as his printer. During this time, his work centered on Black life in America and the civil rights movement. Freed assembled his material on these topics and published the book, Black in White America, in 1968. Freed also produced two films for Dutch television in the 1960s: Dansende Vromen (1963) and The Negro in America (1966).
In 1967, Freed’s photography was shown alongside the work of five other photographers in an exhibition curated by Cornell Capa titled “The Concerned Photographer,” the contents of which were published the following year. In 1972, Freed joined the Magnum Photography Collective, an agency co-founded in 1948 by Cornell’s brother, Robert Capa, and Freed's work began appearing in major periodicals worldwide. His work appeared in Life, Look, Der Spiegel, and The Sunday Times Magazine of London, among others. Freed photographed the Yom Kippur War in 1973. His documentation of the activities of the New York Police Department in the 1970s were collected in the book, Police Work, published in 1980.
Freed continued to work extensively in Europe and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, which included photographing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian Revolution in 1989. A retrospective of Freed’s career, Leonard Freed: Photographies 1954-1990, was published in Paris in 1991. Freed published his last book, a collection of his photographs of older people from around the world, titled Another Life, in 2004.
Leonard Freed died of prostate cancer in 2006, and in 2017 a photobiography of Freed, edited by his spouse, Brigitte, was published with the title, Leonard Freed: His Life and Work: 1929-2006.
References
Capa, Cornell, ed. The Concerned Photographer. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968.
Freed, Leonard, William A. Ewing, Nathalie Herschdorfer, and Wim van Sinderen. Worldview. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2007.
Gefter, Philip. “Leonard Freed, Photojournalist of Injustice, Is Dead at 77.” New York Times, December 4, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/arts/design/04freed.html.
Hopkinson, Amanda. “Leonard Freed, Obituary.” The Guardian, December 6, 2006. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/dec/06/pressandpublishing.obituaries.
“Leonard Freed.” Magnum Photos. Accessed February 11, 2025. https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/leonard-freed/.
Arrangement
Arranged alphabetically.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated to the New School Archives and Special Collections by Brigitte Freed, wife of Leonard Freed, 2024.
Separated Materials
Three photobooks containing work by Leonard Freed have been transferred to The New School Special Collections: The Concerned Photographer: The Photographs of Werner Bischof, Robert Capa, David Seymour ("Chim"), André Kertész, Leonard Freed, Dan Weiner (Grossman Publishers, 1968); Black in White America (Grossman Publishers, 1969); and Police Work (Simon and Schuster, 1980). Contact speccoll@newschool.edu for access to the publications.
Processing Information
Wendy Scheir, director of The New School Archives and Special Collections, selected the photographs in this collection in collaboration with Brigitte Freed, from a large collection of work held at Freed's home in Garrison, New York. Criteria for inclusion were based primarily upon subject matter and geographical location covering a wide span of Freed's career, with a focus on candid images of urban life, underrepresented and marginalized communities, street protest, and New York City.
- Civil rights movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century (Subject) (Places) (Temporal) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Drag community (Subject) Subject Source: Homoit
- Europe -- Description and travel (Places) (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
- LGBT activism (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Minorities (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Photographs (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Photojournalism (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Photojournalists (Occupation) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Tompkins Square Park (New York, N.Y.) (Places) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Title
- Guide to the Leonard Freed photographs
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Victoria Fernandez and Jason Adamo
- Date
- March 18, 2025
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin