Edward Bibring Photographs the Psychoanalysts of His Time, 1932–1938. Edited by Sanford Gifford, Daniel Jacobs, Vivien Goldman, and the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Hillsdale, NJ:  The Analytic Press, 2005,  206 pp., $49.95.

This small book is obviously a labor of love, infused with respect and historical sensibility. The photographs were taken by Edward Bibring with a Rolleiflex small enough to be used unobtrusively and almost candidly. They were taken at the IPA Congresses of 1932 in Wiesbaden, 1934 in Lucerne, 1936 in Marienbad, 1937 at the Vierlandertagung in Budapest, and 1938 in Paris.

I don't think that Edward Bibring had any aspirations to be an artistic photographer. The photos are strikingly ordinary, the sort the average tourist might take of friends and traveling companions when visiting a new city or when finding some interesting architectural background. Ordinary photographs of extraordinary people. While we no longer believe we can read personality from the bumps and irregularities of a person's head, I looked to these photos to offer specific insight into the character of the person photographed or some insight into the relationship of those framed together. I found myself scanning the faces, postures, and clothing of these icons of analysis, hoping to decipher some greater knowledge of these people. After this rather futile exercise, I found it more sensible to first view a photo and then imbue it with all the qualities of that person as he or she is known from scientific contributions, biographies, and analytic gossip. Nevertheless, these photos, perhaps because of their ordinariness, serve to remind us that these were, in their day and also in ours, historical persons of great note, psychic adventurers