66 29 June 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
Final Analysis
Zelda Cheatle is a well-known curator and editor of photography. After some years taking photographs, she began a gallery career at The Photographers’ Gallery in London before setting up and running her
own eponymous photography gallery from 1989 to 2005. For more information,visit her website zeldacheatle.com.
Zelda Cheatle considers... ‘A lone man looks out
of a window in New York City,’ 1966, by Jill Freedman
Photo Critique
J
ill Freedman is a highly respected
New York City documentary
photographer. She has exhibited
internationally and published
many books. Dorothea Lange and
W Eugene Smith were her early
inspirations, fuelled by reading LIFE
magazines in her parents’ attic when she
was seven. She continues to be a woman
with a sense of adventure, mischievous
humour and a liking for good whisky.
She is feisty, has blue twinkly eyes and
the singing voice of an angel, and arrived
in New York from Pittsburgh in 1964.
I met Jill Freedman in 1982. She was
in London to exhibit her Street Cops
photographs at the Photographers’
Gallery. Jill brought the street life of New
York City to London. She had travelled
around day and night in a police car from
1978 for three years, arriving fi rst to the
scenes of crime.
Witness to the dark side of life in her
city, she saw the suicides, the beatings, the
crazy, the drunk, the sad and the very
disturbed. The Street Cops photographs
bear testament to the humanity of the
police, which Jill had not foreseen at the
outset – how often the police showed
bravery, concern and care for those in
trouble. Jill not only photographed but
also wrote the text for each picture to
encapsulate the story and the crime, and
both pictures and text show how the good
cops showed empathy and compassion.
Jill’s dog Fang was her assistant in the
late ’60s. ‘When I was out walking the
street with Fang I saw everything. He
had a great instinct. He taught me how
to look because he never missed a thing.’
I can sense Jill and Fang’s presence,
observing this quiet and uneventful scene.
What I particularly like is the lone man, a
seated fi gure, lost in thought and puffi ngon his cigarette, while the very smart car,
which Jill has caught in refl ection, is
passing by.
Her ability lies in not only photographing
the circus, rather than ‘freaks’ like Diane
Arbus did, but also in sharing a sense of
humanity or making a true and humorous
appreciation of the Irish (who made her
into a Kerry woman) or just these quiet
moments of street life in her city.
‘Photography is magic. You can stop
time itself. Catch slivers of moments to
savour and share again and again. Tell
beautiful silver stories. And when you are
going good and you get a new picture you
love, there’s nothing better. That’s the joy
of photography, and the fun.’
Possibly in Jill’s picture there is a touch
of Saul Leiter, maybe a dash of Garry
Winogrand, maybe a little Lisette Model- but Jill Freedman has something
unique to her.
© JILL FREEDMAN/GETT Y IMAGES