Figure 1.--This is a photograph taken by Herbert List in 1930 with the ElbeRiver in the background. This was the point at which he was making a transition from a hobbiest to an artistic photographer. This particular photograph seems rather artistically pretentious. Almost certainly the ascot was an afectation List provided. We are unsure about the rest of the outfit.

Herbert List was born in Hamburg (1903). Hamburg is Germany's principal seaport and his family were prosperous merchants. He attended the Johanneum Gymnasium where he completed his studies (1920). He moved to Heidelberg where the family business was centered. Following the family tradition, he began an apprenticeship with a Heidelberg coffee dealer (1921). This gave him the opportunity to study literature and art history at Heidelberg University. He worked for his father as a coffee dealer which involved travel aboroad to cofee growing regions (Brazil, Guatemala, and Costa Rica) (1924-28). He returned to Heidelberg to take over the family business. He began taking photographs at this time as a kind of hobby. His artistic leanings led to meeting Andreas Feininger (1930). Feininger helped lead List into a more artistic direction with his photography. It was Feininger who suggested that he use the Rolleiflex, a more advanced camera which helped him give more attention to composition. Feininger also helped introduce him to the city's artistic and social avant-garde among whom he developed a reputation as a photographer. His photography shows the influence of both the surrealist and artistic movement. It is at this time that List begins to develop his charateristic stark style. He begins with still life and friends. He describes his effort as "fotografia metafisica"--an attempt to capture the magical essence inhabiting and animating the world of appearances. The NAZIs seized power (1933). While a German photographer, most of his best known work was not done in Germany. A few years after he left Germany (1936). He was not politically active, but he he had Jewish ancestry, but only one Jewish grandparent. This was not enough to classify him as Jewish under the Nurrenberg law. He was also homosexual, another group the NAZIs targeted. It is at this time, forced to make a living abroad that he turns his up to this time a hobby into a profession. He worked in Paris and then London. He met George Hoyningen-Huene, who helps him get jobs with Harper's Bazaar. He also worked for other important magazines, including Vogueand Life. While financially rewarding, List did not find fashion photographer artistically fulfilling. He experiments withimages trying to create fantasy images using mirrors and double-exposures. List also traveled to Greece and Italy. It is at this time that he took many of his best known photographs, working in Greece abnd Italy. He settled in Greece to evade the German occupation of France. But after the Germans invaded and occupied Greece (1941), the occupation authorities ordered him to return to Germany. He returned to Germany and settled in Munich (1941). For reasons we do not understand, he seems to have avoided problems with the Gestapo. He wa not allowed to pursue his photograohic career s he was partly Jewish. He was also homosexual which did not help his repitation ith authorities. Somehow he got a commission to photograoh the occupied Ukraine, perhps becuse of the ethnic Germans there. He was drafted into the Whermacht and was lucky enough to have been ordered to Norway where he spent the final catatrophic years of the War (1944-45). He returned to Munich after the War. He is best known for his photographs of boys and young men, some of which are mildly homo-erotic. Many of these images appeared in his posthumously published book Junge M�nner.

Created: 4:03 AM 11/24/2009
Last updated: 4:03 AM 11/24/2009