Leonard Freed

Williamsburg, New York City, USA, Jewish Diaspora Street Photography 1950s

1954

Yeshiva Boys, 1954 is a black-and-white photograph of two young studious boys behind a glass door, an entrance to a Brooklyn brownstone in New York City. A gelatin silver lifetime pr...

Wall Street, 1956 by Leonard Freed is a modern print signed verso (on back) by the estate/widow of the photographer, Brigitte Freed. This is a 24" x 20" gelatin silver print. Leonard...

New York City, USA, 1954 is a 13" x 9" archival pigment print (baryta) in a limited edition of 5. Signed verso (back of photo) by Brigitte Freed (wife of the photographer), with Leon...

Wall Street, 1955-56 is a 19" x 13" limited edition print (8 of Ed 9) by photographer Leonard Freed. The work is signed verso (back of photo) by Brigitte Freed (wife of the photograp...

Meah Shearim photograph of Torah scholars. Rabbis in Jerusalem. Photo of Hungarian quarter. Frédéric Brenner (born 1959) is a French photographer known for his documentation of Jewish communities around the world. His work has been exhibited internationally, among others, at the International Center of Photography in New York, the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne, Rencontres d'Arles in Arles, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and the Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam. Brenner was born in Paris and grew up in France. In 1981, Brenner received a B.A. in French Literature and Social Anthropology from the Paris-Sorbonne University. He went on to study at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and received a M.A. in Social Anthropology, also awarded by the Sorbonne. Brenner is the recipient of the Niépce Prize and his book Diaspora: Homelands in Exile won the 2004 Visual Arts Award from the Jewish Book Council. At age 19, Brenner began photographing Orthodox Jews in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem. Initially, he believed this was "authentic Judaism," but his approach quickly evolved into an exploration of the multiplicities of dissonant identities. In 1981, Brenner began photographing Jewish communities around the world, exploring what it means to live and survive with a portable identity and how Jews adopted the traditions and manners of their home countries and yet remained part of the Jewish people. He spent 25 years chronicling the diaspora of the Jews across the world from Rome to New York, India to Yemen, Morocco to Ethiopia, Sarajevo to Samarkand. Brenner has published five books and directed three films. His work has been shown in museums and galleries around the world. He has been represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York since 1990. Brenner’s opus Diaspora: Homelands in Exile was published as a two-volume set of photographs and texts by HarperCollins in 2003 and appeared in four foreign editions. Diaspora was also a major exhibition, which opened in New York at the Brooklyn Museum in 2003 and traveled to nine other cities in America, Europe and Mexico. In reviewing the book, The New Yorker wrote: “Brenner's work—elegiac, celebratory, irreverent—transcends portraiture, representing instead a prolonged, open-ended inquiry into the nature of identity and heritage.” NPR's Robert Siegel has described Brenner's work as "a celebration of the diversity and complexity of diaspora." In 2006, Brenner founded This Place, a collective photography project aimed at recontextualizing Israel from multiple perspectives. The photographers working on this project include Wendy Ewald, Martin Kollar, Josef Koudelka, Jungjin Lee...

Leonard Freed is considered one of the most prolific and timely photojournalists of his generation. Born in Brooklyn, he traveled to Europe for the first time in 1952, where he disc...

Leonard Freed is considered one of the most prolific and timely photojournalists of his generation. Born in Brooklyn, he traveled to Europe for the first time in 1952, where he disc...

Leonard Freed is considered one of the most prolific and timely photojournalists of his generation. Born in Brooklyn, he traveled to Europe for the first time in 1952, where he disc...