Herbert List
(1903 - 1975) Germany
Photographer
The son of prosperous coffee importer, List studied art hisory in Heidelberg before working for the family company.
During business trips to the Americas, he began to take photographs; in Germany, he associated with the avantgarde, other bright young things, handsome sailors and foreign visitors.
List moved to Paris in 1935, the year of his first photographs exhibition. For the remainder of the decade he traveled widely in italy and Greece taking photographs.
He returned to germany in 1940. Although known as homosexual and partly Jewish, he worked as a freelance photographer until drafted into the army and being sent to work in a cartographic division in occupied Norway.
After the war, he resumed his travels in Europe and overseas, photographed a number of famous figures for Life and other magazines and published photography books on the Caribbean, Naples, and Nigeria. Among his most artistically accomplished work, however, are photographs of young men.
In stark and clean bur erotically charged works, such as a a photograph of a handsome bare-chested youth nestreld against a classical statue in Rome, taken in q949, List summed up the conjointed attraction of the Mediterranean of antiquity and the youth of contemporary southern Europe.
Source: excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001
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