Background
Jill Freedman was born on October 9, 1939 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
(A photographic documentation of the Beatty-Cole Circus, r...)
A photographic documentation of the Beatty-Cole Circus, recording and portraying the customs, activities, animals, and singular personalities of an endangered way of life.
https://www.amazon.com/Circus-Days-Jill-Freedman/dp/0517520087/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=Jill+Freedman&qid=1576218526&sr=8-6
1977
(This new 50th-anniversary edition of the book reprints mo...)
This new 50th-anniversary edition of the book reprints most of the pictures from the original publication, with improved printing and a more vivid design. Alongside Freedman’s hard-hitting original text, two introductory essays are included, by John Edwin Mason, historian of African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia, and by Aaron Bryant, Curator of Photography at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
https://www.amazon.com/Jill-Freedman-Resurrection-City-1968/dp/8862085834/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Jill+Freedman&qid=1576218454&sr=8-1
2018
Jill Freedman was born on October 9, 1939 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
Jill Freedman graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in sociology.
After college, Jill Freedman went to Israel, where she worked on a Kibbutz. She ran out of money and sang to make a living; she continued singing in Paris and on a television variety show in London.
She arrived in New York City in 1964, and worked in advertising and as a copywriter. As a photographer, she was self-taught.
On hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jill Freedman quit her job and went to Washington, DC. She lived in Resurrection City, a shantytown put up by the Poor People's Campaign on Washington Mall in 1968, and photographed there. Photographs from the series were published at the time in Life, and collected in Freedman's first book, Old News: Resurrection City, in 1970. Jill Freedman then lived in a Volkswagen kombi, following the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. For two months, she photographed "two shows a day and one show each Sunday. Seven weeks of one night stands", and moving across New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Ohio. She wanted to photograph the performers as people. The work was published as a book, Circus Days, in 1975.
In 1975, Jill Freedman started to photograph firefighters around Harlem and the Bronx. This took her two years; she lived with the firefighters, sleeping in the chief's car and on the floor. This resulted in a book, Firehouse, published in 1977.
Some of the firefighters had previously been policemen, and they suggested that she might photograph police work. Jill Freedman had disliked the police but reasoned that there must be good policemen among them. For her series Street Cops (1978-1981), she accompanied the police to an area of New York City including Alphabet City and Times Square, spending time with those who seemed good cops. The work resulted in the book Street Cops.
During the seventies, Jill Freedman was briefly associated with Magnum Photos, but did not become a member. She had difficulty making a living, but sold prints from a stand set up outside the Whitney Museum building.
In 1988, Jill Freedman discovered that she was ill. The medical expenses meant that she had to leave her apartment above the Sullivan Street Playhouse. In 1991, she moved to Miami Beach; she was dissatisfied there but was able to read a lot. She sometimes worked for the Miami Herald. She also managed to publish a photobook of dogs. She also published the second of two photobooks of Ireland.
Around 2003, Jill Freedman moved back to New York. She moved to a place near Morningside Park in 2007, and was still living there in 2015.
In her later life, Jill Freedman lived in Harlem. On October 9, 2019, she died from complications of cancer at a care facility in Manhattan.
(A photographic documentation of the Beatty-Cole Circus, r...)
1977(This new 50th-anniversary edition of the book reprints mo...)
2018