For decades, Jill Freedman documented the teeming streets of New York City in the tradition of many documentary photographers before her whose work she devoured as a child in old copies of Life magazine found in her family’s attic. After moving to New York City in 1964, she borrowed a friend’s camera, recorded an anti-war demonstration in the street, and never looked back. Her work was characterized in her obituary as “part documentary, part activism." She often embedded herself with close-knit communities whose stories she wanted to tell, including firefighters in Harlem and the South Bronx where this picture capturing a fleeting and ambiguous moment was taken. An outspoken free thinker and woman in a male-dominant profession, Freedman did not gain the recognition she deserved in her lifetime.

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