February, 2001 HERBERT LIST: The Magic Eye Photographs by Herbert List Ignored by major photography historians, little known in the United States beyond a circle of collectors, Herbert List, a Munich-born photographer who died in 1975, is now on his way to being recognized as one of the most important photographers of the last century. List's oeuvre, accomplished from the 1930s to the mid-1960s, looked for a synthesis between antique and modern life, or more precisely a renaissance of antiquity within the spirit of the mechanical age. List's recent recognition is due in large part to Max Scheler, his friend of many years and his executor who helped assemble a retrospective book and companion exhibition of List's best photographs. It is now hosted at the Ivam/Centro Julio Gonzales in Valencia, Spain, soon to travel to France, Italy, Canada and the United States. The various sections of the book and exhibition reflect different periods and creative modes of List's work, from a surrealism, expressed in landscapes and still lifes, that evokes Manuel Alvarez Bravo, to a metaphysical mode close to De Chirico. List's relationship to the world of archeology and a Hellenic human ideal brings to mind his close friend George Hoyningen-Huene, while some of his documentarywork is close to early Henri Cartier-Bresson and Italian neo-realist films. After the war List joined the Magnum photo agency for a short time and dedicated himself to reportage without relinquishing his sense of ironic distance and absence of moral judgement. Like his colleagues Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ernst Haas, Werner Bischof and David "Chim" Seymour, he published many magazine essays. For example, in Du magazine List published portfolios on the Caribbean (1958), Mexico (1960), Naples (1962) and Berlin (1966). But List preferred the book format to magazines. Always a reticent artist not prone to self-publicizing, in his later years he abandoned photography and dedicated himself to his collection of Italian mannerist and baroque drawings. Beyond aesthetic categories, it is only fair to encompass the whole of an artist who wanted to reconcile intelligence and emotion: "A photograph," he wrote, "could be the fruit of a sudden intuition or a shrewd reflection." Whether his images were generated by one or the other, what they have in common is a sense of mystery, of a secret shared beyond appearance. These ruins, are they part of an antique Greek temple or are they the destroyed library of his native Munich under Allied bombs? What vision do we glimpse within these abandoned glasses on a table? What were the three embraced youths whispering in this summer of 1933 on a Baltic beach? Why does the soap lather on this black athlete's body resemble the foam on this wave's crest? What was on Picasso's mind when in 1938 he posed for List in front of an almost finished painting? List's erotic scenes, private until the 1988 publication of Sons of Light, continue the homoerotic tradition of Von Gloeden and Hoyningen-Huene. But they do not objectify their subjects: tenderness and reserve are shown in the young men's faces, and the play of light and shadows softens their bodies' perfection. As a portraitist, List is also remarkable: he captured the faces of the artists he knew such as Giacometti, Braque, Stravinsky and many others. The resulting pictures demonstrate his empathy and his capacity for extreme discretion. In front of him the famous do not pose; they let their guard down. Surrounded by the frizzy halo of her hair, Colette stares at a telephone that does not ring. In the Naples harbor, among sailors, Vittorio de Sica has fallen asleep, his right hand holding his raincoat collar to his cheek. Mysterious as it remains, List's world is not a private world of fantasies. Close to the surface we can decipher multiple and complex undercurrents. Like the Romantic poets, List was always preoccupied with signs from the unknown that can emerge from in-between appearances. The insisting presence of our world's mystery is what keeps his photography alive. Carole Naggar Above: Germany On The March, Paris, 1937 Love 1, Hammamet, 1934 Transplant, Vienna, 1944 Colette With Phone, Paris, 1948