One of America's great photojournalists, Leonard Freed was born in 1929 in Brooklyn, NY. As a young man he studied painting and graphic design. Although he originally intended on becoming a painter, he became interested in photography after studying with the influential art director Alexey Brodovitch. One of his first bodies of photographs was a study of Hasidic Jews living in Brooklyn in 1954. He showed the work to Life Magazine who introduced him to Cornell Capa, and Capa, in turn, introduced him to Magnum. Freed moved to Europe in 1956 and began working on assignments for publications including Paris-Match, GEO, London Sunday Times Magazine, and Der Stern.

In 1962 Freed went to Berlin upon hearing that a wall was being erected to divide the city. He made a now famous photograph of a an African American soldier standing alone in front of the wall and the irony struck him, African Americans at home were marching and protesting for civil rights and there in Germany was an African American soldier ready to defend his country. Freed and his family left Europe for the U.S. shortly afterwards and began making photographs in Harlem, Washington DC, and eventually throughout the South. This body of work documented the plight of the African American and was published in 1968. The name of the book was Black in White America and it sold over 60,000 copies.

Over the years Freed published 11 more books and has displayed his work in several national and international group exhibitions as well as 25 solo exhibitions. His work can be found in public collections such as the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., the International Center of Photography in New York, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.