Born in Pittsburgh an only child, Jill Freedman was someone who dreamed of becoming a photojournalist from an early age. She described, in particular, being powerfully moved by the pictures she saw in old copies of Life magazine found in her family’s attic, but it was only after she moved to New York City in 1964 that she decided to take up photography seriously. She borrowed a friend’s camera, recorded an anti-war demonstration in the street, and never looked back. In 1968, Freedman quit her job as a copy editor following news of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and took part in the Poor People’s Campaign and life in Resurrection City, the plywood shantytown that grew up on the mall in Washington, D.C. in the days following the march. A number of her best known photographs date from that event, some of which ended up in Life magazine, but she also went on to work as a freelance photographer employing a distinctive approach characterized in her obituary as “part documentary, part activism.” Freedman often embedded herself with close-knit communities whose work she was drawn to and stories she wanted to tell, like firefighters on the front lines in Harlem and the South Bronx, or traveling circus performers whose humanity she captured even hidden behind clown costumes and face paint. As an outspoken free thinker and a woman in a very male profession, Freedman did not easily fit into the macho world of photojournalism and, during her lifetime, never made much money nor gained the recognition she deserved. Although she did produce several books of street photography over the course of her career, she died of cancer in relative obscurity in 2019.

---