Thursday 7 August 2008

Gisele Freund - Biography announced for September

Today I "became a fan" of the James Joyce group on Facebook. They've got some handful of nice pictures of Joyce on their group page. These reminded me of the great pictures which the German-French photographer Gisèle Freund took of James Joyce - I believe it was in the 1940s. Really some remarkable pictures, full of intimacy and dignity for one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. I've got a small edition with those pictures at home. Always great to browse again.

And this reminded me of Gisèle Freund. I was wondering whether her work is still available and did some search on Amazon. Well, most of her books are out of stock. But, for September, they've announced the publication of a biography - tranlsated from French to German - right in time for the 100th birthday of Gisèle Freund. The book is simply and very adequately called: Gisèle Freund: Porträt. I will certainly look for it in September.

Gisèle Freund is definitely one of the great artists in photography of the 20th century. She was a wizard on portraits and took pictures of almost every celebrity around in the middle and second half of the last century. And she was a remarkable woman. This articles available on temple.edu, reprints from the New York Times and the London Times, respectively, when Gisèle Freund died in March 2000, gives a very fine commemmoration of her and shows some of her best work.

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