Batya R. Monder, Curator
Shahid Najeeb’s interest in photography and psychoanalysis, and his way of bringing his two passions together with arresting images and provocative text, moved all of us who have helped to make this exhibit happen. The text takes many forms: a prose introduction, Haiku poems embedded in an image, quotations from Sigmund Freud, and others, as well as verse. All of it coalesces in the three-part exhibit that follows and allows the viewer to respond to the images and text in his/her own personal way.
The idea for the exhibit emerged over time and involved three continents: Australia, where Najeeb lives and works; Europe, specifically Italy, where Stefano Bolognini, president of the IPA, resides; and the United States where the VPM is published. Stefano Bolognini was the one person who saw Najeeb’s exhibition in Sydney in August of 2014, and he had a book of Najeeb’s photographs in his home when Devra Hall Levy, our Webmaster, and her mother Jane Hall, past president of the Contemporary Freudian Society, visited him in Bologna in May of 2015. Months later, in a planning meeting of the VPM, that book came back to Devra, and she mentioned Najeeb’s work and how he was able to bring together psychoanalytic concepts with powerful photograph images. We liked what we heard, and with Stefano Bolognini’s help, we were able to contact Shahid Najeeb and begin to correspond directly with him. This exhibit is the result of our collaborative process.
Continue to
- IPA President Stefano Bolognini’s Introduction
- Psychoanalytic Moments
- Psychoanalytic Reflections
- Requiem for a Traceless Psychoanalyst