Shortly after the 1939 exhibitions, Freund was forced to flee Paris as the war and fascism were approaching. With the support of the Argentine writer Victoria Ocampo, she gained entry to Argentina, where she spent the war years working as a photojournalist, capturing stunning images of the Tierra del Fuego and photographing many South American artists, writers, and political figures, including Eva Peron.

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In 1945, Freund spent time in Mexico, where she photographed and became friends with bisexual artist Frida Kahlo. However, she continued to think of France as her home, and in 1952, she returned there to live.

She became the only woman to work for Magnum, a cooperative photo agency that had been founded in 1947 by Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa, and other photographers. However, in 1954, when she was refused entry to the U.S. because her name appeared on a McCarthy-era blacklist, Magnum fired her, fearful that her socialist sympathies would damage the agency during the anti-Communist fervor of the time.

Despite this reversal, Freund had no problem getting work as a photojournalist, and her pictures appeared in such publications as Paris Match, Art et décoration, Verve, and Images du monde.

In 1968, Freund became the first photographer to be honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Paris Musée d'Art Moderne. And in 1974, she published a revised version of her doctoral thesis as Photography and Society, now widely regarded as a standard work on the subject.

In 1980, Freund received the grand prix national des lettres, a high national honor that made her feel that she had at last been accepted by the French. In 1981 she became even more a part of the French establishment when she was commissioned to make the official presidential portrait of François Mitterand.

During the late 1980s, Freund retired from photography in order, she said, to devote herself to her other grand passion, reading. In 1983, she published a memoir, Three Days with Joyce.

Freund died on March 31, 2000 in her beloved Paris.

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