At the Historic Corner Window. 17.6.18971

‘Incidentally I have been through some kind of neurotic experience …’

What old photographs convey above all is a sense of loss. This intriguing image of a man and part of a room is infinitesimally small in contrast to the lost world outside its window and the lost world of thought and experiences below its surface. In this case even the size of the original photo (77 mm × 50 mm) and its wide border create an effect of looking down into a well. But at the same time the image confronts us with a challenge. This early photo of Freud (and it may be the earliest existing snapshot, rather than a posed portrait) contains a great deal of historical data both within the image and in the context of the image. It challenges the viewer to turn all that passive data into current information.

Even though it shows Freud alone, this is a family photo. It formed part of a collection of family pictures set in a single frame like a collage (Engelman 1976, Pl. 50). Hanging on the wall at Berggasse 19 for many years, this small compendium would have been a point of reference for the family itself, a memento of its own composite history. The collage theme is repeated inside the photo: Freud is seen against a wall covered with various photographic prints brought back from holidays. These appear to have been largely from his holidays in Italy, travelling without wife or children. Thus the photo, and all the tiny pictures in the picture, ‘bring home’ a part of his life lived outside the family.

The date inscribed below the photo reveals another level of family involvement. 17 June 1897 was the fifteenth anniversary of Freud's engagement to Martha Bernays and consequently the picture may well have been a gift to mark that occasion. A curious one if it is, since it is of him alone and not the two of them together. But this may have been dictated by the circumstances. Around that date they happen to have been apart. Freud had