A few days before his emigration from Vienna to London, photographer Edmund Engelmann courageously and secretively recorded Freud's legendary residence, documenting it in photographs that were eventually published. An old volume of these photographs was presented to artist Robert Longo in 1993, acting as the catalyst and primary source material for the 30 large-size charcoal works that constitute The Freud Drawings. Robert Longo prints are a visual cliche of psychoanalysis as the illumination of the soul's darkness. In Longo's version of Freud's house, the place is deserted, as if its occupants left in haste. In this way the artist draw the attention to the absurdity of the historical events by emphasizing that Freud was working on his psychoanalysis during the time, when Nazis were in Vienna and he had to leave in hast.
“ At times, distorted by the vehicle of memory, I had the feeling that I was trying to remember the apartment and its contents. While, at other times, I felt as if I had arrived for an appointment to find the premises deserted, but undisturbed – left for me to explore in solitude. „