Berlin-born photographer Gisèle Freund (1908-2000) came to prominence in Parisian exile, staging her first exhibition at the Maison des Amis des Livres, whose proprietor Adrienne Monnier is pictured here. Some of Freund’s early photos were taken with 35 mm film offcuts from the cinematic works of Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. The latter, along with other members of the photographer’s illustrious circle, are here depicted around the start of World War Two. Freund seems to locate the tensions of the time in the faces of her subjects; Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce were dead within three years, all but Joyce by their own hands. An exhibition of Freund’s work begins today at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
Adrienne Monnier
James Joyce
Colette
George Bernard Shaw
Jean Cocteau
Vita Sackville-West
Paul Valéry
Stefan Zweig
Sylvia Beach
Thornton Wilder
Virginia Woolf
Walter Benjamin
Further reading
Places: Phoenix Park, Places: Miramare, Wyndham Lewis | portrait studies (James Joyce)
Berenice Abbott | portraits (Joyce, Cocteau, Beach)
Pearls: Colette, A fountain of ink, Dress-down Friday: Mathilde de Morny, La Marquise de Sade, Monsieur le Marquis (Colette)
Pearls: Jean Cocteau, The ghosts of Versailles, Death becomes her, Phantom of the empire, World Famous Aerial Queen, Dress-down Friday: Barbette, Circles: Ludwig II/Sissi, Jacques-Émile Blanche | portraits, Circles: Erika and Klaus Mann (Jean Cocteau)
Lady Ottoline Morrell | photographic portraits (Virginia Woolf)
Germaine Krull | arcades, Tiergarten (Walter Benjamin)
