(Light over Greece), which was to be printed in
1939 by the Paris publishing house Arts et Me ́tiers
Graphiques, did not happen. In 1945, the plates
were destroyed in a printing press in Magdeburg
during a bombing campaign. The book finally
appeared in 1953.
The male body and its representation is a central
theme that can be traced throughout List’s entire
work. His first photographs were taken on the
beaches of the Baltic Sea, and List’s photographs
often invoke nature as a snapshot of an ideal, time-
less, utopian vision of masculinity that celebrate
the cult of eternal youth and the beauty of beautiful
men. Most of List’s photographs of young men
were never published when they were taken. In
the 1930s and 1940s, photographs of male nudes
could have put List in acute danger because his
pictures of young male bodies could not be recon-
ciled with the image of the body held by the
National Socialists. This is true even though List’s
perspective and monumentalization adopted the
reigning aesthetic of the 1930s and suggests the
political climate of the time. In using the ancient
Greek image of the body, ancient models of the
ideal physique became central to his work. They
are recorded in the aesthetic ideal of ancient Greek
sculpture and the athletic figures they represent.
The play of light and shadow became a decisive
element in his compositions. These echoed back to
the invigorating effect created in his photographs
of store window mannequins and to his series of
Viennese wax figure works titledPra ̈uschers Panop-
tikum, which seemed to bring the artificial human
figure back to life.
After the war ended, List began work photo-
graphing ruins of the destroyed city of Munich,
focusing on the baroque and classical structures
of a city so renowned for its architecture that it
was called ‘‘Isar-Athens,’’ or Athens along the
Bavarian river Isar. These photographs, made in
glistening light, created an aesthetic experience
that linked his images of Greece with the ruins of
Germany. In the immediate post-war period, this
representation of destruction—one wholly deprived
of moralizing—met with no interest and no possibi-
lity for publication.
Beginning in the 1950s, List turned away from
the symbolic arrangements of still lifes and archi-
tecture and concentrated on the representation of
people. List substituted individual images with the
photographic essay. He took photographs showing
daily life in places like the Trastevere quarter of
Rome or the city of Naples, and these works
became his greatest contributions toLifemagazine.
The form of the book also became more important
to his photography. Between 1945 and 1947 List
self-published many of his most important photo-
graphy projects with private publishers. Books he
readied for publication include,Zeitlupe Nullwith
metaphysical still-lifes, Augenblicke with photo-
graphs of encounters with people, Ver Sacrum
with photographs of young men, and the volume
of photographs Panoptikum with photographs
from a wax figure works. However, up to the
Panoptikum, List’s projects were collections of indi-
vidual photographs. However, in his booksRome
(1955),Caribia(1958), about the island world of
the Caribbean, andNapoli(1962), the concept of
series became the defining element. In the 1950s,
List produced reportage projects with emotional
themes that displayed his interest in people and
the shift in his works to human interest photogra-
phy. From that point forward List’s works con-
veyed a sensitivity toward humanity and his
attention often focused on the lives of simple peo-
ple. These included the Indians on coffee planta-
tions in Mexico and the black population on the
Caribbean islands, their customs and religious
rituals. His first experiments with color photogra-
phy appeared in 1960 in the magazineDu.
EstherRuelfs
Seealso:History of Photography: Interwar Years;
Photography in Germany and Austria; SurrealismBiography
Born in Hamburg, Germany, 7 October 1903; attended a
humanist high school, 1912–1920; 1921 started training
in a coffee company in Heidelberg; 1923 entered his
father’s coffee company; traveled as a student to Brazil,
Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, and the
United States, where he took his first photographs,
1926–1928; acquainted with Andreas Feininger, who
encouraged his interest in photography, 1930; headed
the family’s coffee import company and pursued photo-
graphy as an amateur, 1930; first publication appeared in
the yearbookArts et Me ́tiers Graphiques, Paris, 1935; left
Germany and abandoned his career and became a work-
ing photographer, going to London, Paris, Athens, and
published inVogue,Harper’s Bazaar,Verve,Life, 1936–
1941; traveled to Greece and worked on the projectLicht
u ̈ber Hellas, a volume of photographs of Greece, 1939–
1941; after the occupation of Greece by the German army
he had return to Germany, 1941; as a ‘‘non-Aryan’’
he could not officially work for the German press; worked
on a series of portaits of artists and intellectuals, in
France he made portraits of Pablo Picasso (1944) and
Jean Cocteau (1948); served the German army as a map
maker, 1944–1945; lived in Munich and after the war
worked as photojournalist, most often forDu,1945–
1960; worked temporarily as a photo reporter and art
editor forHeute, 1946; published various books of
human interest photography, 1955; publishedRom,Car-LIST, HERBERT