“German-born French photographer, famous for her documentary photographs and portraits of writers and artists. In the 1930s, Freund’s subjects nearly covered the who is who of Parisian intelligentsia, writers, painters, philosophers. Her best-known book is Photographie et société (1974), about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium.[…] Freund entered at the Sorbonne, receiving her PhD in 1936. In the mid-1930s, Freund played chess with the cultural critic and essayist Walter Benjamin at a café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Also the Bibliothèque Nationale connected them - Benjamin wrote there a study of Baudelaire, Freund her dissertation on early French photography, La Photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle.” (Read more). Gisèle Freund on ArtNet.