Itamar Freed

Born in 1987 in New York City, works and lives between London/NYC/TLV/AUS. 

Itamar Freed, crafts hyper realistic representations of portraits and landscapes, his ongoing body of work features habitats from across the globe, questioning the distinctions between the natural and artificial, real and manufactured. For Freed, photography forms an axis between painting and reality - comprising imagined narratives controlled by the artist, and the actual objects documented by the camera.

Freed’s photographic works search for the idea of realness in the natural world. His practice examines the discreteness of three domains: the wild and uninhabited natural habitat; the cultural landscape of the city; and the staged environment. Freed is interested in representation and how images of places may come to displace or augment our understanding and memory of them. He is concerned with disappearing terrains, but also with vanishing notions of realness—whether in the form of a simulated environment or a digital photograph of unknown veracity. In his practice, he explores how we come to understand what is “real” and how we imagine the places we have never been. Freed’s work is about the way we learn to look at the world around us and the way we use our collective memory and language.

Freed’s work has been showcased in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including Museum of London, London Nights; Royal Academy, London; Royal Photographic Society, Bristol; Offprint TATE, TATE Modern, London; BEERS London Gallery (solo show);  Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh; Pulse Miami, Volta New York, Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, London; Grosvenor House, Christie's Auction House, Hancock Gallery, Newcastle; Photo LA, NordArt, Germany; Photo Israel, Haifa Musuem of Art, Ramat Gan Museum of Art, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane; Untitled Art Fair Miami Beach.

Freed  has an MA in photography from the Royal College of Art, London 2018 and received his BFA Photography Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem 2012. He was the 2016 recipient of the Clore Duffield Foundation Scholarship for a Masters degree at the Royal College of Art valued over 70,000 GBP.  Among the many awards he has received are the Travers Smith 2021/2022 CSR Art Awards Alumni Artist, London; BEERS London Summer Marathon 2020, London; “EPSON” first prize for excellence in the art of photography, 2012. Freed also received an award of $10,000 AUD to exhibit his work at Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney, Australia, 2018. Freed was selected for the 2019 Airie - Artist in Residence in Everglades Program in the Everglades National Park, Florida, USA and the BigCi Artist Residency Program, Sydney, Australia, 2017. 

Currently, Freed is working toward a show in Photo London Somerset House 2023 and a solo show in  the Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial, Victoria, Australia, 2025.

Freed’s works are included in numerous private collections worldwide as well as major public collections such as JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, USA; The Estee Lauder art collection, USA; The Clore Collection, UK; the US. Department of State Collection, USA; Lauren and Mitchell Presser Photography Collection, USA;  and other private collections.