Leonard Freed

Leonard Freed, photographer: born New York 23 December 1929; married 1958 Brigitte Klück (one daughter); died Garrison, New York 29 November 2006.

Leonard Freed was a photographer of the rarest insight and talent. Outwardly he was shy and, by comparison with many of his peers, the quiet man of photography. He had the steady humour and relaxed attitude of a good companion, but it masked a determined and serious photographer.

He once said that "photography is a good excuse to meet people and get involved and get invited to parties . . . it allows you to wander around with a purpose." His purpose, it seemed, was to make images that reflected the human condition, with singular wit, erudition and an earthy curiosity.

In the 1960s his work on black America and the civil rights movement, published as Black in White America (1969), became a significant part of the influential "Concerned Photographer Fund" programme. Started by Cornell Capa, the project was the seed which would eventually to grow into the world-renowned International Centre for Photography (ICP) in New York. Freed's work, presented alongside that of photographic legends such as Cornell's brother Robert Capa, André Kertész and Werner Bischoff, the project made his reputation internationally. The appellation "Concerned Photographer" stuck, but was a narrow and simplistic description of what really concerned him.

I first became aware of him with the publication of his book Police Work in 1980. The emotional range and intensity of the pictures was electrifying. They combined the drama and horror of crime in New York during one of its most desperate periods, with dark humour and even moments of elation, woven together to make one of the great photographic documents of our time.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929, to Jewish parents of Eastern European descent, Freed began taking pictures in his twenties while travelling in the Netherlands. From 1954 he studied in Alexey Brodovitch's "Design Laboratory" photography class, before setting out as a freelance photographer.

Following his close association with Cornell Capa in the 1960s, it was a natural progression for him to join, in 1972, the celebrated photographers' agency Magnum Photos, though he certainly never fitted into the contemporary idea of the photojournalist. Though at times he photographed conflict and war, it was always clear that he was far more interested in the individuals, their stories and their condition, rather than any sense of trying to record the history, or bringing back the news for the edification of the public.

It is interesting that photographers as diverse as the art photographer Mark Power and the enfant terrible of pop and fashion photography Jamie-James Medina have cited Freed as their most powerful early influence. It is perhaps because his pictures speak to people about issues and emotions that effect us all. He never confined himself to reporting the news, but reported on people.

In late 1989, as Communism was collapsing, I put together a project for Magnum, to photograph the capital cities of each of the main Eastern Bloc countries as the new decade started. Photographers, along with most people, like to spend Christmas and New Year with their families, but Freed was excited and enthusiastic to head off to Romania, to experience the beginnings of the new world order. As it happened, he headed straight into the short and bloody uprising that overthrew the tyrannical regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.

Freed turned 60 in Bucharest on the day the fighting started. He was in the midst of all-out fire-fights and trapped with civilians under sniper fire, and though he was twice the age of most of the members of the world's press who streamed in, he returned with a story second to none. When the fighting stopped, only Leonard Freed thought to head off to the local maternity clinic, to contrast the death and violence, with the beginning of new life.

Throughout out his career Freed chose difficult stories, which would challenge him: blacks in America, the situation of the Jews, police andcrime in New York, the Ku Klux Klan. In his retrospective book (Leonard Freed: photographs 1954-1990, 1991), he says that he did the work in order to face the "sickness", his country's and his own fears and ignorance, and to overcome it. "Instead of going to a psychiatrist, I do things on my own with a camera," he said. "But in the end there will always be a new sickness to be overcome. Eventually, one of them will kill you."

Neil Burgess