THE RELEVANT QUEER: Herbert List, Influential Photographer of Fashion and Homoerotic Male Nudes

“The lens is not objective. Otherwise photography would be useless as an artistic medium.”

TRQ: Herbert List, Born October 7, 1903

Herbert List, the openly gay surrealist photographer influential for his fashion work and homoerotic male nudes, was born in Hamburg, Germany on October 7, 1903.

List attended the Johanneum Gymnasium and University of Heidelberg. He studied history, literature and Greek art. Working for his family’s company, Kaffee-Import Firma List & Heineken, Hamburg, List began taking photographs on business trips to Brazil, Costa Rica and Guatemala. He met photographer Andreas Feininger in 1929 and joined Hamburg’s social and artistic avant-garde.

Within a year List started photographing surreal images of friends and male models draped in fabrics, in a style influenced by Giorgio De Chirico, the Bauhaus, Man Ray and Max Ernst. Working with the male nude, List often experimented with double exposures and masks, to make “composed visions where [my] arrangements try to capture the magical essence inhabiting and animating the world of appearances.”

List moved to Paris in 1935, to escape the Nazis in Germany. Photographer George Hoyningen-Huene helped List find employment as a photographer in London and Paris. In 1936, he started photographing celebrities for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Life.

Even though his homoerotic nudes were unpublished during his lifetime, List turned to the adolescent male as subject over and over in his work. In the photograph North Sea, Germany (ca 1933), List fills the frame with the body and idealised youth of a blonde male.

He shot the image from below and captures the popular sense of Jugendbewegung later appropriated by the Nazis.

In the photograph Athens, Greece (1936) a young male leans in through an arched doorway, wearing only white briefs, barely concealed behind a veil featuring a Greek temple and swans.

In 1937 List had his first solo show at Galerie du Chasseur d’Image. He returned to Greece to photograph its ruins, architecture and landscape for Licht über Hellas (1953).

“The lens is not objective. Otherwise photography would be useless as an artistic medium.”

In 1941, after the German army invaded Greece, List was forced to return to Germany. Living in Munich, he could not work or publish because of his Jewish heritage. In 1944, List was drafted into the war to draw maps in Norway. On one trip to Paris, he took portraits of Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Joan Miró, and other artists.

List returned to Munich after the war, where he worked for Harper’s Bazaar, Flair, Epoca, Look and Heute. In 1948, he was made Heute’s art director.

Between 1949-62, List travelled to Italy, Greece, Spain, Mexico and the Caribbean. In 1951 he met photographer Robert Capa. Capa invited List to join Magnum Photos, a photographic cooperative co-founded by Chapa, David “Chim” Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and William Vandivert. In 1958, Caribia, List’s second book, featured photographs taken in the Caribbean. In 1960, List photographed gay icons Paul Bowles, W. H. Auden, and Marlene Dietrich.

In 1964, List was awarded the David Octavius Hill Prize of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner. However, by 1965, List had stopped photographing.

On April 4, 1975, he died in Munich. The National Gallery in Washington DC acquired his archive of work.

In 1988, List’s Jünge Manner was finally published. Filled with images of men lounging, swimming, and wrestling under the sun, the book is erotic, avant-garde and yet innocent.

While List’s fashion photography was critically and commercially successful, his erotic images of young men have become his most influential work. His aesthetic echoes through the work of Herb Ritts, who photographed both celebrities and nude male models. List also influenced the easy, playful and often erotic fashion work of Bruce Weber.

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Sources:

GLBTQ Archive

Herbert List

WoW

Stephen Daiter Gallery