Gisèle Freund: Portrait photograph of Anna Seghers at the International Congress of Writers (1935)

Photograph: Anna Seghers, writer
Anna Seghers at the First International Congress of Writers 1935 in Paris, photo taken by Gisèle Freund
© bpk | IMEC, Fonds MCC | Gisèle Freund

Gisèle Freund: Portrait photograph of Anna Seghers at the International Congress of Writers (1935)

Das menschliche Gesicht, die individuellen Gesten haben mich immer fasziniert. Ein Porträt scheint mir gelungen, wenn man in ihm die Persönlichkeit des Photographierten und nicht die des Photographen wiederfindet.

[The human face, the individual gestures have always fascinated me. To my mind, a portrait has been successful when it reflects the personality of the subject being photographed and not the personality of the photographer. (ed. trans.)]

Gisèle Freund, Memoiren des Auges, 1977


The photographer Gisèle Freund had been invited to the First International Congress of Writers in Defence of Culture by the writer André Malraux. It was held in June 1935 in Paris, where she was living in exile. She used this opportunity to take many photos of the participating writers. Freund was acquainted with a lot of authors and had acquired a reputation as a “portrayer of the intellect”. She later wrote the following about the congress: "I remember [...] Bertolt Brecht with his shy smile, shaved bald like a prisoner; [...] Heinrich Mann who looked like a happy citizen, and Anna Seghers with the eyes of a dreamer." (Gisèle Freund: Photographien. Munich 1985)

In Anna Seghers, Freund portrayed a German writer who dealt intensely with the issues of persecution and exile, among other things, in her novel The Seventh Cross which was published in 1942.

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