Artwork Title: Jerusalem

Jerusalem, 1962

Leonard Freed

Leonard Freed originally destined himself to photography but, after discovering a book about Henri Cartier-Bresson, he decided to turn his attention to photography. Thus in 1954, he learnt his job besides Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar magazine. During the 1950s, he observed the streets of New York such as his legendary 1956 photograph featuring walkers in Wall Street that seem to compose a synchronized dance with the street lamps. Having himself suffered from his Jewish origins, the American photographer promptly decided to concentrate on themes linked to social tensions, violence and discrimination from the Jewish community of Amsterdam or Jerusalem to Asian immigrants in Newcastle, the Civil Rights struggle, the Ku Klux Klan as well as police brutality: ‘Suddenly, I feel as if I belong to a tradition. To see life, see the world, be witness to great events, peer into the faces of the poor, the mad, to understand the shadows of the jungle, hidden things, to see, to rejoice in seeing, to be spiritually enriched.’ [https://theredlist.com/wiki-2-16-601-806-view-street-1-profile-freed-leonard.html]
Uploaded on Mar 31, 2018 by Suzan Hamer

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