Jill Freedman Unleashed

Legendary documentary photographer Jill Freedman—who was famous for her gritty, compassionate documentation of the circus, FDNY and NYPD—loved dogs. “I never saw them as little furry people,” she once wrote. “They are nothing like people. They are like dogs, a nicer species. I love watching them, playing with them, knowing them. I wish I were more like a dog, but I’m working on it.”

And now, from August 19 to September 14, you can view a collection of Freedman’s portraits at Chroma Fine Art Gallery in Katonah. “This show isn’t just about dogs,” says Rita Baunok, owner of Chroma. “It’s cats, horses, even chickens and donkeys. She loved animals more than people, and you can feel that in every frame.”

Photo of a dog running.

It’s like stepping into a museum

Freedman, whose award-winning work can be seen in permanent collections at The Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the New York Public Library, among others, was celebrated for her darkroom talent. “She was one of those photographers you learned about in school,” says Baunok. “She loved very dark, very deep, velvety blacks; she painted with light. Jill would add or reduce the light to what she wanted us to focus our attention on. She was brilliant.”

This exhibit will feature Freedman’s original, exhibition-quality prints, developed by Freedman herself. “I didn’t want to reprint from the film or make digital prints—not yet,” Baunok says. “We still have her original prints, and that’s what we’re showing.”

Although Freedman spent the majority of her career in New York City, she later moved to Westchester, giving locally based photographers like Baunok the opportunity to meet Freedman before she passed. “I want people to walk into the gallery and just feel her work,” Baunok says. “This is a museum-quality show. It deserves to be seen. And I love when people come in and ask questions. That’s the best part—talking with them and seeing them connect with her work.”

Katonah resident Nancy Schiffman Sklar and her sisters Wendy Wernick and Susan Hecht, Freedman’s cousins, now manage her archive and will be at Chroma often during the show. “I love talking to people about Jill and answering questions,” Sklar says. “We want people to know her and understand how diverse and prolific her pictures were.”

Free spirits with tender hearts

The animals Freedman photographed, especially the dogs, might not be what you would expect from a famed photographer. “We don’t love her dog book because they’re kind of ugly, but they’re funny,” says Sklar. Baunok adds, “She was looking for dogs and animals with interesting personalities or who looked like people. They are not picture-perfect portraits of animals; they have personality.”

“She liked that they looked like us,” Wernick explains. “They have free spirits; they have tender hearts. I think that had a lot to do with it.”

This exhibition has been three years in the making. When Baunok first showed Freedman’s work in 2022, she displayed some of the photographer’s most iconic images. But she knew this theme would come next. “First, I wanted a show people could relate to because they knew her, or they saw her books or images somewhere,” Baunok explains. “But when I viewed her archives, the number of animal photographs hit me immediately. I never saw a show of hers that focused on her animal pictures. And since people around here love dogs—I have so many customers who come in with their dogs—I thought, why not? Let’s do it.”

Freedman the musician

Freedman’s path to photography wasn’t linear. After earning a BA in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh, Freedman took her guitar and “sang her way through Europe,” says Wernick. “She had a voice like Janis Joplin.” Sklar adds, “She wasn’t the best singer. She once told me, ‘I must have been damn cute.’ But she really loved music, especially jazz.”

According to Wernick, Freedman compared photography to music—there was a rhythm to it. “She said her camera had timing, like an orchestra coming together,” Wernick remembers. “That’s how she captured those exact moments. She had a sense of timing. It’s what made her work so moving—she knew how to wait for the moment when everything lined up.”

And while Freedman’s work expertly captured people’s and animals’ emotions, Sklar and Wernick say Freedman didn’t “play nice in the sandbox.” But that never stopped her. “She would talk to anybody, including homeless people she saw in the street,” says Sklar. “But when she saw a dog, she would stop and hug it.”

A collection of Jill Freedman’s animal photography can be seen at Chroma Fine Art Gallery in Katonah from August 19 to September 14.

This partner content was published in the July/August 2025  edition of Connect to Northern Westchester.