Jill Freedman , a hard-working, hard-living photographer who immersed herself for months at a time in the lives of street cops, firefighters , circus performers and other tribes she felt were misunderstood, died on Wednesday at a care facility near her home in Manhattan. She was 79.

Nancy Schiffman-Sklar, a cousin, said the cause was complications of cancer .

Lots of people dream of running away and joining the circus, but Ms. Freedman actually did it, and created a body of images that captured the ache and solitude and weirdness of the American road at the point where, as she wrote, it “sings with the sinister energy of insane clowns.”

For Ms. Freedman, this energy was her muse.