Biography provided by Focal press
 
Wrote the first Ph.D. thesis on photography. Known for her direct, naturalistic, tightly cropped portraits of France's literati (from 1938 often taken in color) and published reportage in LIFE, Paris Match, Picture Post, and Vu magazines. Her expanded Ph.D. thesis was later published as Photography and Society, which examined the history of photography in terms of the social forces that produced and molded it.
 
(Author: RH)
 
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)
 
Approved biography
Courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK)
 
Gisèle Freund studied sociology and history of art at the University of Freiburg before moving to Frankfurt in 1931 to study with the famous sociologists Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias. Her father had given her a Leica and Elias - noting the ever-present camera - suggested that she study 19th-century photography. Freund was also active in socialist circles and in 1933 she was forced to flee to Paris. There she continued her studies, completing what was to be the first PhD thesis ever written on photography, and started to take photographs for a living. She became known for her portraits of writers (from 1938 often taken with colour film) and published reportage in Life, Picture Post, Vu and Paris Match magazines.
 
On the eve of the German occupation of Paris, Freund - a Jew and an anti-fascist - was again forced into exile, first to the south of France and then to Argentina. She became a member of Magnum in 1947 and covered Latin America for the agency until 1954. She returned to Paris and continued her career as a writer, photographic reporter and photographer of literary figures. In 1974 her PhD thesis was translated into English and published as the influential book Photography and Society.
 
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission.