The Fondation Pierre Bergé -Yves Saint Laurent in partnership with IMEC presents until february 5th 2012 an exhibition of prints and documents of Gisèle Freund covering the years 1933-1940. For its 16th exhibition the foundation Pierre Bergé -Yves Saint Laurent wanted to give homage to the great photographer Gisèle Freund (1908-2000) her works have not been shawn in France since the Georges Pompidou center retrospective in 1991.

With about a hundred prints the curators Olivier Corpet and Catherine Thieck with designer Nathalie Crinière are revealing the pioneer side of the photographer.She was first in using color films for portraits and projection to show her writers portraits. Sociology was always an important aspect of photography for her as can be asserted by her thesis that was published in France « Photography in France in the XIXth century « The time period covered by the exhibition is from her first stay in Paris, in may 1933 she escaped nazy Germany precipitously, then had to flee Paris to the free zone in 1940. In spite of the hardship of this period as underlined by the curators and by Elisabeth Perolini who worked on her biography for the catalog of the exhibit, it was a very creative time. It was in this short time that most of Gisèle Freund work was done. She translated and published her thesis, realized her first photo reportage « The international congress of writers for the defense of culture at the mutualité » 1933, « The depressed area in England »1936, James Joyce in Paris 1938.

In an exceptionally rich parisian literary world she will become the writers photographer's. The Fond Memoire de la Création Contemporaine who received the archives of the artist and who entrusted them to « IMEC » increased by works coming from public, private , french and foreign collections , gave the opportunity to the curators to show a realistic view of that time. Her first black and white portraits ( André Malraux, Walter Benjamin...) but most of all the activities around Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach in their Paris book store Shakespeare and Company on the rue de l'Odéon, whose facade and windows are recreated for the exhibition. This is the place where Gisèle Freund met and befriended writers little used to being photographed.

Presented chronologically this period 1933-1940 is articulated around Three themes The BW work with about fifty prints of writers portraits and reportages. The color work starting 1938 also about fifty prints of writers from Paul Valery to André Gide, Stefan Zweig and Romain Rolland with Colette , Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and from 1938 with Joyce advices the Anglo Saxon writers. The exhibition is interspaced with archival documents( letters, magazines, contact sheets,publications and slides show.)

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Exhibition
Gisèle Freund, L'oeil frontière Paris 1933-1940
October14th 2011-January 29th 2012
Space of exhibition
3 Rue Léonce Reynaud
75116 Paris
From Tuesday to Sunday except holidays
11am-6pm
Tel +33 1 44 31 64 31

Conferences

The Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent organises around all the exhibitions a cycle of conferences. The occasion of the exhibitions of Gisèle Freund's and Walter Benjamin's archives
presented at the museum of jewish art and history a crossed conference organized at the foundation
the title of which : »Gisèle Freund and Walter Benjamin: looking at a friendship »by Florent Perrier
scientific adviser of the MAHJ
It will held Thursday December 8th 2011 at 7pm
Conferences at the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent
5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris
Mandatory Reservation
conferences@fondation-pb-ysl.net
or 01 44 31 64 17/19

Publication

Catalogue of the exhibit
Gisèle Freund L'Oeil Frontière Paris 1933-1940
Co edition IMEC/ Editions de la RMN et du Grand Palais
Texts Gisèle Freund, Christian Caujolle, Catherine Thieck and Olivier Corpet Lorraine Audric
biography illustrated by Elisabeth Perolini

Carnets of Gisèle Freund
Facsimiles of two carnets made by Gisèle Freund and composed of collages of her writers portraits
faced with typed extracts from their texts
Co editionn IMEC/ Editions de la Rmn and du Grand Palais

La Photographie en France au XIX ème siecle
Sociology and Esthetic essay of Gisèle Freund
Editions Christian Bourgois, Paris 2011
Reedition of her thesis on sociology published in 1936 published by Adrienne Monnier
foreword André Gunthert.

Walter Benjamin and Gisèle Freund « une amitié en regard »
of Florent Perrier
Editions IMEC