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24/7/2002

Gisele Freund

Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona CCCB, Barcelona

THE WORLD AND MY CAMERA

Hall 3 of the CCCB

With this exhibition devoted to Gisèle Freund (Berlin, 1908 - Paris, 2000), the CCCB presents Spain's first complete exhibition specifically about this extraordinary photographer, a pioneer in colour portrait photography and renowned for her contributions to the theory of photography. The exhibition is a co-production of the Fundació Sa Nostra and the CCCB, and is sponsored by the Fundació Caixa de Catalunya and in collaboration with the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte

Gisèle Freund was born into an upper middle-class German Jewish family. She studied sociology at the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research) in Frankfurt under Adorno and Manheim, where she attended left-wing student meetings and took part in the fight against National Socialism, which obliged her to flee Germany and take refuge in Paris. In France, she started to work as a photographer for the magazines Vu, Life and Weekly Illustrated. In 1935, with a series of photographs of André Malraux, Gisèle Freund began a collection of portraits of personalities from the world of culture which she completed over the next fifty years of her life, and which were published in magazines such as Time and Life. In 1936, she presented her doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne: La Photographie en France au XIXème siècle. With the progressive occupation of France by the Nazi troops, in 1942 Freund went into exile in Buenos Aires. There, she continued to work as a photographer and promoter of French culture throughout the American continent. When the war ended, she settled definitively in Paris, where she continued to work as a freelance photographer but now with international recognition. In the course of the following years, she also devoted herself to writing; her works include Le monde et ma camera (1970) and Photographie et societé (1974) (Photography and Society). She died in Paris in 2000, at the age of 91.

In the form of a journey to the places which marked the life of the photographer, visitors to the exhibition GISÈLE FREUND. THE WORLD AND MY CAMERA can discover the gallery of celebrities portrayed by Freund: influential personalities from the fields of culture, art, literature and politics whom she had the opportunity to meet and get to know and who shaped one of the most stimulating and prolific periods of the twentieth century: James Joyce, Walter Benjamin, Virginia Woolf, Evita Perón, Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Simone de Beauvoir, Henry Matisse, Julio Cortázar... These images that time was to turn into icons contain a story, a human relationship and a whole procedure of capturing the face of which Gisèle Freund was master and theorist: "we live in a face that we do not see." This exhibition gives it back to us.

The exhibition is divided into five sections: 1. Frankfurt; 2. Paris; 3. Saint Sozy: the second refuge; 4. South America: exile, and 5. A time for friends, a time for museums, a time for written reflection. It makes its way around half a century of the professional life of Gisèle Freund in the form of in the region of a hundred and fifty photographs. The itinerary reveals the evolution of her visual perception, influenced by new friends, different backgrounds and cultures, light and colours; the precision and sensibility of her camera allowed her to capture the atmosphere of the places, the foremost events and the prime movers of the time in every field.

The portrait was certainly one of the fields in which Gisèle Freund best expressed herself. The photographer used her camera not just to reproduce reality, but also to capture the personalities of her subjects and tell us their stories. In order to draw us into the private world of her sitters, Freund created a style of her own which included in the photographic take her own form of stage set, the backdrop of the room or place, and highlighted the personal belongings, the clothes and effects which made up the background and the life of her subject. We have therefore decided to include a large number of images of her sessions with the subjects of her portraits which give us a greater understanding of Freund's way of working.
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THE STRUCTURE OF THE EXHIBITION

A) Photographic work

The exhibition is divided into five sections which form a route around the different cities and countries where Gisèle Freund carried out her work:

1. FRANKFURT. This section includes a series of images of the first student and popular demonstrations in the city of Frankfurt against Nazism, photographs which she concealed on her person when she fled Germany.

2. PARIS. This section centres on the writers and other foremost personalities of cultural life, and her first colour portraits dating from 1938: James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Walter Benjamin, Malraux, Cocteau, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Ortega y Gasset, etc.

3. SAINT SOZY: THE SECOND REFUGE. Between 1940 and 1942, Gisèle Freund took refuge in this small village in the south of France. During this period, she ceased her activity and only took photographs of the members of the family who took her in.

4. SOUTH AMERICA: EXILE. Her report about Evita Perón and the portraits of the Argentinian writers she met in the course of these years: Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo, Eloy Bioy Casares, etc. There is also a fair representation of her Mexican photos to admire: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Siqueiros, etc.

5. A TIME FOR FRIENDS, A TIME FOR MUSEUMS, A TIME FOR WRITTEN REFLECTION. Portraits of various figures from the artistic and cultural world of the time: Duchamp, Man Ray, Beauvoir, Sartre, Le Corbusier, Matisse, Bonnard, Cortázar, etc.

B) Other documentary materials

- Magazines featuring her photographic reportages.
- Magazines which published her texts.
- Some of her books.
- Sheets of contacts.
- Seven audiovisuals with footage of radio and television interviews with Gisèle Freund.
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CATALOGUE

The exhibition catalogue brings together 160 photographs by Gisèle Freund, accompanied by texts signed by Lydia Oliva, the exhibition curator; Klaus Honnef, the historian of German photography; Joan Oliver, historian; the actress Hanna Schygulla, and Gisèle Freund herself.

Lydia Oliva: Una vida d'aventura, una obra aventurera (A life of adventure, an adventurous body of work)
Klaus Honnef: Una biografia fotogràfica (A photographic biography)
Joan Oliver: Moments estel·lars de la història de Gisèle Freund, que ho són del segle XX (The high points in the life of Gisèle Freund, the high points of the 20th century)
Hanna Schygulla: La xaman de la fotografia (The shaman of photography)
Three texts by Gisèle Freund
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- Exhibition opening times
* Until 8 September: Tuesday to Sunday: 10.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. Closed: Mondays (except holidays)
* As of 10 September: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, 11.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. and 4.00 to 8.00 p.m.
Wednesdays and Saturdays: 11.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. Sundays and holidays: from 11.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m.

- Admission to the exhibition
* Price: 4 euros
* Concessions, Wednesdays (except holidays) and for senior citizens, the unwaged, students and group visits (minimum 20 persons): 3 euros.
* Free admission for under-16s and Friends of the CCCB.
- Combined admission to other exhibitions
* Price: 5.50 euros.
* Concessions: 4 euros.

- Ticket sales at the ticket office of the CCCB, branches of Caixa Catalunya and from the Tel-Entrada ticket sales service on 902 101 212.

- Group visits: by prior arrangement, by calling 933 064 135 (Tuesday to Friday, from 10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.) or by e-mail: SEducatiu@cccb.org.

For further information, contact our Press Service (Mònica Muñoz)
Tel.: 93 306 41 00 - Fax: 93 306 41 01 - mailto:mmunoz@cccb.org

CCCB (c/ Montalegre, 5 - 08001 Barcelona)

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