Photography and Freud: From Roma-Amor to Erotic Saturn

An Illustrated Hampstead Authors Society Talk by Mary Bergstein

Sound recorded at the Freud Museum on 13 February 2012 Mary Bergstein, gave an illustrated talk at the Freud Museum, introduced by HAS Chaiman Zsuzsanna Ardó. The talk explored Freud's visual imagination in terms of the photography he (and his patients) pondered. It is important that Freud believed repressed memories were unconscious, and that the most potent memories and desires would emerge in psychoanalysis from deep inside, via dreams. In the period from Freud's childhood to his old-age ruminations, several kinds of photographs were prominent: portraits, psychiatric illustrations, archaeological photography, and ethnographic documentation. These images along with the erotic photography and films of the era, that Mary Bernstein will introduce, paralleled the phenomena of Freudian memories and dreams. Mary Bergstein is a scholar of Italian Renaissance sculpture, painting, and architecture. She has also published widely on the cultural history of photography, which includes Mirrors of Memory: Freud, Photography, and the History of Art (2010). Bergstein is interested in the social history of art and visual culture, and has written on topics from Donatello and Michelangelo, to “reproductive” photography, to advertising art and contemporary manufactured dolls such as Barbie and Bratz. The Hampstead Authors Society (HAS) is a transcultural, transdisciplinary creative society, connecting ideas, people and places. HAS venues and partners include the Royal Institute, the British Film Academy (BAFTA), Nehru Centre, Jewish Cultural Centre, French Cultural Institute, Riverside Studio, Everyman Cinemas, Artsdepot Gallery, La Notte Blu di Firenze, Casa della Creativita, 12 Star Gallery, Europe House.