Greenwich Village, New York, 1979 © Jill Freedmanįrom the home that is her refuge, Freedman brings an acute eye to the 21st century. Each event, each tragedy, triggers the deep, intense look and the empathy for the underdog which, in this world of ours, can shock and sometimes disturb. Freedman is the “peace correspondent” she’s always wanted to be, permanently angered by American policy and, in this month of January, very moved by the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Most of the time she’s striking back against the lunatic bombast of the women newsreaders on CNN and Fox News, delicious victims she turns on at noon with her latest toys: HD Ready screen, Apple TV, MacBook Air. Milk-white winter outside, tropical living room inside: from her comfortable leather armchair she jams with words and stories, then without warning goes into a rock’n’roll rant against the rottenness of a world she will pillory until her dying day. Big blue eyes, red cheeks, throaty voice, disheveled hair: she looks like a street clown, a force of nature-and every word brings the kind of transfiguration you find in remarkably gifted interpreters of life.įreedman might love play-acting, but she also has her serious side: this is someone for whom there’s only a thin line between pleasure and pain. An unbroken theater that turns her images into fables and reveals her as much more than a virtuoso photographer. A life Freedman enjoys recounting via numberless comedy routines and hilarious one-liners, against a constant musical background shot through with syncopation and jazz overtones. There’s no obvious order: prints are jumbled with books and personal notebooks in an archive that makes you think of a treasure trove and gives you an irresistible urge to rummage through a life that seems way out of the ordinary. Visitors are rare in this place that looks like a shrine-and with Jill Freedman looking like the keeper of the flame.

In her Harlem apartment, with Central Park a stone’s throw away, she brings the same warmth and tenderness to serving coffee as she does to the people in her pictures.

Not driven by any inner need, or because she’s showing off, but out of the same generosity that pervades her photography-an oeuvre harking back to a time when authorial compassion was the yardstick images were measured by. At seventy-five this lifelong lover of endless chats and priceless anecdotes has you spellbound one minute and laughing out loud the next. Jill Freedman charm is just so hard to resist.

Heart-on by Jill Ireland