Leonard Freed Biography
Leonardo Freed was born in Brooklyn in 1929. Freed initially wanted to become a painter, however he began taking photographs while in the Netherlands in 1953 and discovered that this was where his passion lay. In 1954, after travels in Europe and North Africa, he returned to the United States and studied in Alexei Brodovitch's "design laboratory". He moved to Amsterdam in 1958 and photographed the Jewish community there. He pursued this concern in numerous books and films, examining German society and its Jewish roots. His book on Jews in Germany was published in 1961 and Made in Germany, about post-war Germany, appeared in 1965. Working as a freelance photographer from 1961 onwards, Freed began to travel extensively, photographing blacks in America (1964- 65), events in Israel (1967-68), the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the New York City Police Department (1972-79). He also made four films for Japanese, Dutch and Belgian television. Early in Freed's career, Edward Steichen, then director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, purchased three of his photographs for the museum. Steichen claimed that Freed was one of the three best young photographers he had seen and urged him to remain an amateur, as the other two were now doing commercial photography and their work had become uninteresting. Freed joined Magnum in 1972. His coverage of the American civil rights movement first made him famous, but he also produced important essays on Poland, Asian immigration to England, the oil development of North Sea and Spain after Franco. Photography became Freed's medium for exploring social violence and racial discrimination.
