Herbert Fried is a name ultimately little known in the photographic landscape today, and yet, “Herb” immortalized the most beautiful years of European and Hollywood cinema of the last century and its emblematic figures, such as Elke Sommer, Romy Schneider, Alain Delon or Audrey Hepburn again. THE Passau Museum of Modern Artin Bavaria, devotes a retrospective to the German photographer, made possible thanks to the successive discovery of archives recovered by the agency Atelier & Friends to make it a real collection.
Herbert Fried was born in Berlin in 1926, to an Austrian father and a German-Jewish mother. This dual identity, in a context marked by the rise of Nazism and the upheavals of the Second World War, profoundly influenced his work. On the one hand, a father seduced by the ideals of the Nazi regime; on the other, a mother facing threats because of her origins. This ideological contrast, a source of family tensions, left an indelible mark on his childhood, which he spent partly exiled in Vienna: “For the first time, I realized that outside of Germany, there were another world, inhabited by people who had completely different points of view and embodied completely different ideals,” he confides in his autobiography.
Fascinated by cinema from an early age, Fried found a kind of refuge in photography, literally and figuratively. In 1943, aged 17, he escaped the forced labor imposed by the Third Reich thanks to his employment as a reproduction photographer in a printing company – the latter then declared him “unfit” for the mission. He then enriched his experience in a photographic laboratory for the American armed forces, developing his technical mastery while forging his American Dream.
In 1948, Fried managed to exile himself to the United States, where he joined his mother, who had emigrated two years earlier. In New York, he laid the foundations for an international career that would lead him to become a photographer who was both discreet and influential. That’s when he was nicknamed “Herb”. He shared his life between Italy, Germany and the United States, roaming film sets and capturing the greatest personalities of the time, in a format that seemed to define him: out of frame.
His work is distinguished by an intimate and familiar approach – far from the frozen portraits we are used to from the time. These photos offer a new look at the icons who shaped the post-war seventh art and perfectly complement works by big names such as Irving Penn or Richard Avedon. His lens captures the knowing glances, the bursts of laughter, the stolen moments and we often surprise signs of reciprocal affection, which can be read in the looks his subjects give him: Romy Schneider, for example, in an image captured at the restaurant after filming, in the presence of Alain Delon. The third plate on the table suggests that Fried was not only a photographer, but perhaps also – especially? – a friend.
Behind these portraits, a crazy sincerity also and above all shines through: that of the sparkling Martine Carol, frying pan in hand, of course, or that of Audrey Hepburn, mischievous, wearing a basket. Portraits which ultimately manage to demystify the Hollywood star, a perilous exercise. Another photograph shows the Belgian artist alongside Gary Cooper, whose natural and sensual pause evokes a painting. Glamor and lightness blur the boundaries between cinema and reality.
This collection of thousands of photographs has traveled a long way before finding refuge in the heart of the Bavarian Forest. It offers a great opportunity to (re)immerse, for the duration of an exhibition, into the cinema of the 50s and 60s, through photos which, implicitly, convey the social and cultural upheavals of the last century.
Noémie de Bellaigue
The exhibition Herbert Fried: Film stars on set and in their private lives can be discovered until January 26, 2025 at MMK Passau.
MMK Passau
Bräugasse 17
94032 Passau, Germany
https://mmk-passau.de
https://www.herbfried.com
