freud's couch/london

Sigmund Freud's couch. It is so crazy to look at this and think how the things said on this couch have affected our understanding of human psychology. If you believe in Freud's theories or not, you cannot dispute his influence.
Just to paint the picture for you, Freud sat in that green velvet chair, just out of the sightline of his patients. Fascinating, right?

rewind/dr. freud/london

Well today it starts my friends. I am going back to the beginning of all this travel I have been doing and filling in what I have glossed over. There is so much I have not yet shared. Like this image of Sigmund Freud's office. Some of you may know I am a bit obsessed with Dr. Sigmund Freud and this office. He actually didn't really see a lot of patients here because he was rather ill by the time he was in London. But when he fled Vienna, his office was meticulously packed up and shipped over to London and reconstructed in his home in Hampstead. Can you imagine the thoughts he had sitting in that chair?

note from london/freudian goodness

My time here is London is coming to a close. I had so many things I wanted to do and see and in the end I was working on the next People Watching post for the NYTimes a lot longer than I planned. But hey...you gotta get it right.
Anyhow, it all works out the way it is supposed to. I did get to see the Lucian Freud exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery on Thursday, which was an absolute priority for me. So today when I was deciding what to do with my last day I just could not resist the pull of the Sigmund Freud Museum. I have wanted to go for years. I am fascinated by him and his office - the couch the chair. No photos allowed in the museum (of course I will be returning for a proper shoot soon), but they did let me shoot the ceiling in what is now the gift shop. Ernst Freud (Sigmund's son and Lucian's father) was an architect, so these fantastic skylights were his work. A couple more from all the Freud experiences as well. Both powerful emotional experiences for me. But the Lucian Freud show had me in tears. I saw some of my most favorite paintings on the planet for the first time.
Heading to NYC tomorrow for a brief shoot! Tomorrow I'll be in the USofA. How strange!

Sigmund Freud's home in Hampstead.

Something about this quote really resonates with me. Of course the rooms I shoot, I don't know when I enter, but I know them as intimately as I can when I leave. And I am there because I love and am interested in the people.