View of Courtyard from Freud's Study, Berggasse 19, Vienna 2016

Pigment ink on gloss Baryta
7 x 10.5in. / 17.78 x 26.67 cm 
Edition of 3

"September 2019 marks the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two and the death of Sigmund Freud. 

"Freud died in London, where he settled after fleeing Vienna to escape Nazi persecution. During his lifetime, and ever since his death in 1939, Freud’s clinical methods have been questioned, his academic theories discredited and his personal conduct criticized. However, to this day, his concepts shape our thinking and colour our conversations. We talk knowingly about the id, the ego and the superego; the Oedipus complex and the death wish; female and infantile sexuality; rationalization, denial and projection; the conscious, subconscious and unconscious; and of course, the Freudian slip. We are all Freudians.

"I hope this body of work will stimulate viewers to think about the profound impacts of Freud's theories and the cataclysmic events of World War Two.

"For almost 50 years, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, lived and worked at number 19 Berggasse in Vienna. There I searched for items that Freud had actually touched, relics that contain his DNA. Because all his furniture and possessions had been removed in 1938, I had to content myself with the doors, floors, stairwells and light fixtures that remain unchanged.

"Like Freud, I travelled from Vienna to London. I felt compelled to visit the home where he had lived the year before his death on September 23rd 1939. His house at 20 Maresfield Gardens still contains most of Freud’s furniture from Vienna, including his celebrated couch, the holy grail of psychoanalysis."

- L. Hossack