Herbert List: Journeys to the Mediterranean
Herbert List (1903-1975), Ritti with Fishing Rod, 1937 | Goldfish Bowl, 1937 | In the Morning, 1937, posthumous prints 1999. MMFA, gifts of Amnuai Khongna and Yves Nantel. © Herbert List / Magnum Photos
A seminal figure of 20th-century photography, Herbert List was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the MMFA in 2002. However, none of his works have figured in the Museum’s collection until just recently, when Amnuai Khongna and Yves Nantel offered us three photographs inspired by the artist’s Mediterranean excursions and by Surrealism. We would like to express our gratitude to them for this gift.
Alexandrine Théorêt
Whoever has anything approximating to a sixth sense knows that photography,
for all its technicalities, harbors a profound magic.
- Herbert List1
Born in Hamburg in 1903 to a family of merchants, Herbert List began his career as an apprentice in his father’s coffee business while studying literature and art history at the University of Heidelberg. Between 1924 and 1928, he took photographs of the trips he took for the family business. It was only later, in the 1930s, that he would choose photography as his profession. His rigorous, classic black-and-white compositions would have a major influence on modern and contemporary photography.
In 1930, List met Andreas Feininger, who introduced him to the Rolleiflex, a camera with twin lenses, which was much more sophisticated than the ones the young photographer had been using up to that point, and which facilitated the composition of images. Strongly influenced by the Surrealist movement and the Bauhaus school, List developed his own style, mainly photographing still lifes or his friends. Of Jewish descent, he left Germany in 1936, before the outbreak of World War II. He settled in Paris, then in London, where he met fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, who recommended him to Harper’s Bazaar. List accepted some assignments from the magazine, but, dissatisfied with his commercial work, turned to composing still lifes in the studio. In the late 1930s, his trips took him to the Mediterranean Basin, notably Greece, where he once again photographed his friends as well as temples, ruins, landscapes and classical sculpture.
The years the artist spent in the Mediterranean were as prolific as they were decisive. His images of young men on sunny beaches celebrated the male form while illustrating the encounters he had on his sojourns. He often captured his models by the sea, busy having fun or fishing. The results fall somewhere between immortalizing a moment, a day at the beach, and the vision – timeless, idealized – of friendship and love between men.
Ritti with Fishing Rod
This photograph is an excellent example of the way List depicts his young subjects: beautifully coiffed in the style of the day, partially clothed and assuming a natural and spontaneous attitude. They are often positioned in front of ruins or fragments of Greek statues. Their poses recall those of classical or Renaissance sculpture, but unlike the models used by some of List’s predecessors like Wilhelm von Gloeden, they bear no artifice. Moreover, List does not show his subjects nude, but rather in underwear or in bathing suits – an approach he felt was more sophisticated and less scandalous. He was also interested in the idea of intergenerational homosexuality in ancient Greece.2 His models are usually photographed backlit, in low-angle shots, as though they were themselves statues or monuments. This is the case with Ritti with Fishing Rod, in which the young man is shown crouching and concentrating on his task.
Herbert List (1903-1975), Ritti with Fishing Rod, 1937, posthumous print 1999, gelatin silver print, 40.5 x 30.3 cm. MMFA, gift of Amnuai Khongna and Yves Nantel. © Herbert List / Magnum Photos
In the Morning
List took inspiration from the classical architecture he discovered in Athens and in the Surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst to make photographs focused on form and composition. The Mediterranean light and landscapes lend the everyday objects selected by the artist an almost magical brightness. List thus became the photographer who best represents fotografia metafisica, a style related to magic realism, where dream states and fantastical images coincide. His use of mirrors, masks and empty window frames creates compositions imbued with symbolism. Here, the photographer plays with the transparency of an ornate curtain, behind which we can clearly see a young man coming in through the doorway.
Herbert List (1903-1975), In the Morning, 1937, posthumous print 1999, gelatin silver print, 1/15, 40.2 x 30.4 cm. MMFA, gift of Amnuai Khongna and Yves Nantel. © Herbert List / Magnum Photos
Goldfish Bowl
In this composition, a fish bowl rests on a low wall that overlooks a shimmering sea at sunrise or sunset. Further out, backlit, we can make out an island. List would later write that this image is a metaphor for the human condition: like the fish in its bowl, we are prisoners of our immediate environment and our corporeal container, unable to immerse ourselves fully in the world’s magnificence. This scene showing a confined fish, so close to a sea that is nevertheless out of reach, was taken some time after List was forced to leave the land of his birth. It can also be read as a meditation on the futility of life or exile.
Herbert List (1903-1975), Goldfish Bowl, 1937, posthumous print 1999, gelatin silver print, 40.5 x 30.4 cm. MMFA, gift of Amnuai Khongna and Yves Nantel. © Herbert List / Magnum Photos
1 Photography as a Means of Artistic Expression, 1943.
2 A relationship between the erastes (adult man) and the eromenos (young man) that is as much a physical as it is an instructional bond.
