Gisèle Freund

02 janvier 1992
02m 45s
Ref. 00190

Information

Summary :

On the occasion of the Georges Pompidou Centre's exhibit dedicated to Gisèle Freund's photography, she is interviewed at home. She talks about her career while sharing her most famous photographs of writers.

Media type :
Broadcast date :
02 janvier 1992
Source :
A2 (Collection: JA2 20H )
Themes :

Context

Gisèle Freund was born in 1908 in Schöneberg near Berlin. As an adolescent, her father gave her a Leica camera that would never leave her. She studied in geology at the University of Frankfurt am Main, but as the Nazism grew, she fled Germany and finished her studies in Paris, where she took French nationality and submitted a thesis on Photography in France in the 19th Century, that she would publish, thanks to Adrienne Monnier in 1936.

It was through her that she met and mixed with numerous writers, while still unknown, who she took colour portraits of, using Agfacolour film. In that way she immortalised Michaux, Yourcenar, Cocteau, Beckett, Gide, Woolf and many other celebrities such as Mitterrand.

Fleeing France during the war, she left to report from Latin America, then became the first lady photographer at Magnum in 1948.

She was invited to exhibit her works in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, in 1968 and in 1991, a large retrospective was devoted to her by the Pompidou Centre. Recognised as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth century throughout the whole world, she died in Paris in 2000, after having received several awards and given to the state over 300 photographs.

Emmanuel Zbinden

Transcription

Henri Sannier
In Beaubourg, in Paris, a large retrospective for a great lady of photography. Gisèle Freund, she's 83 years old. She's the official photographer of François Mitterrand, the President of the republic. She's also the friend of the greatest writers of the century. She has been friends with Malraux, Cocteau, André Gide, and a plethora of stars that aren't as well known but that are very talented, right, Mr. President? Gisèle Freund, who remains modest, readily states: "I never believed that photography is an art". Report by Monique Atlan and Jacques Gérard.
Monique Atlan
Most of these pictures, we recognise them, we recognise them, often without knowing that it's thanks to her. Today she's 83 years old. Gisèle Freund, born in Berlin, a refugee in Paris as soon as Nazism started to rise, has, all of her life, collected shots of the greatest artists of the century.
Gisèle Freund
Here's Paul Valéry in his office, Bonnard the painter, in front of his home at Le Cannet, a picture of... what's her name? We hear a lot about her.
Monique Atlan
Duras?
Gisèle Freund
Duras, yes.
Monique Atlan
But in reality, for Gisèle Freund, photography wasn't a vocation, but rather a way to live, a way to satisfy her curiosity of the world and her total passion for literature.
Gisèle Freund
Myself, I wanted to write but I couldn't do it: I had roots in several languages. But I love literature and I only took pictures of those that interested me, those whose books I knew.
Monique Atlan
Modest, too modest, Gisèle Freund refuses to be called an artist. She wants to be known as a translator of reality and of these faces that we usually hide behind a mask.
Gisèle Freund
I think that the best one that I've done, is the one of Virginia Wolf, a portrait of her at a time when she wasn't aware that I was taking her picture. All of her problems really come out of her head, out of her eyes and mouth. Instinctively, I guess, I don't know what it was inside of me that triggered the need to take someone's picture each time, when I found that it was, in reality, something inside of the other person.
Monique Atlan
But a photographer is also defined by her refusals. A question of morality.
Gisèle Freund
There are many things that I wouldn't want to photograph. I was criticised for not having gone to take pictures of a war, because I said no. I always thought, and this is why I was interested in photography, that thanks to the knowledge of the world that we got from pictures, that people would stop killing each other. If I know someone very well, why would I kill him? But I was mistaken. One day, I understood that this wasn't true, that people kill each other anyways.
Monique Atlan
However, beyond this disillusion, Gisèle Freund's work carries more than ever proof of this passion, of this hope seen in the writings and the expressions of those who have crossed her path.
Henri Sannier
And now, next, it's...