Herbert List was born in Hamburg in 1903 and died in Munich in 1975. He was a great photographer, an observant and curious traveller, a fi ne-art collector and a visionary poet who could construct pictures with perfect formal rigour and poignant beauty. His photography is well-balanced, powerful and perfect and his pictures of southern Europe – an Italy that should be explored and a dazzling Greece – have delighted generations of photographers and artists since the 1950s. A play of shadows, a refl ection on the sea or a ray of sunshine in the alleyways: in every picture List always
managed to frieze snatches of reality so perfect in the combination of light and form as to be unique, rare and
precious.