Documentary Photography Since the Sixties-Getty.edu
PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAYS
LEONARD FREED
BLACK IN WHITE AMERICA
Photography shows the connection between things, how they relate. Photography is not
entertaining, this is not decoration, this is not advertising. Photographing is an emotional thing, a
graceful thing. Photography allows me to wander with a purpose.
—Leonard Freed (American, 1923–2006), interview in Worldview, 2007
While working in Germany in 1962, photographer Leonard Freed happened to notice a
black American soldier guarding the divide between East and West as the Berlin Wall was being
erected. It was not the partition between the forces of Communism and Capitalism that captured
Freed’s imagination, however. Instead, he was haunted by the idea of a man standing in defense
of a country in which his own rights were in question. The experience ignited the young
photographer’s interest in the American civil rights movement raging on the other side of the
globe. In June 1963 Freed headed back to the United States to embark on a multiyear
documentary project, published in about 1968 as Black in White America, that would become
Photography shows the connection between things, how they relate. Photography is not
entertaining, this is not decoration, this is not advertising. Photographing is an emotional thing, a
graceful thing. Photography allows me to wander with a purpose.
—Leonard Freed (American, 1923–2006), interview in Worldview, 2007
While working in Germany in 1962, photographer Leonard Freed happened to notice a
black American soldier guarding the divide between East and West as the Berlin Wall was being
erected. It was not the partition between the forces of Communism and Capitalism that captured
Freed’s imagination, however. Instead, he was haunted by the idea of a man standing in defense
of a country in which his own rights were in question. The experience ignited the young
photographer’s interest in the American civil rights movement raging on the other side of the
globe. In June 1963 Freed headed back to the United States to embark on a multiyear
documentary project, published in about 1968 as Black in White America, that would become
the signature work of his career.
The Black in White America series is a kind of visual diary with a moralizing purpose. It is
highly personal and socially engaged with an implicit goal of effecting change through
communication. While Freed made pictures of important events in the civil rights struggle,
including the 1963 March on Washington, he quickly found that his interests lay not in recording
the progress of the civil rights movement per se but in exploring the diverse, everyday lives of a
community that had been marginalized for so long. Penetrating the fabric of daily existence, his
work portrays the common humanity of a people persevering in unjust circumstances. His
sensitive and empathetic approach sought not to stimulate outrage but to foster understanding
and bridge cultural divides as a means of transcending racial antipathy.
The Black in White America series is a kind of visual diary with a moralizing purpose. It is
highly personal and socially engaged with an implicit goal of effecting change through
communication. While Freed made pictures of important events in the civil rights struggle,
including the 1963 March on Washington, he quickly found that his interests lay not in recording
the progress of the civil rights movement per se but in exploring the diverse, everyday lives of a
community that had been marginalized for so long. Penetrating the fabric of daily existence, his
work portrays the common humanity of a people persevering in unjust circumstances. His
sensitive and empathetic approach sought not to stimulate outrage but to foster understanding
and bridge cultural divides as a means of transcending racial antipathy.