Herbert List (and a bit on Bruce Weber)
I’ve long been a fan of Bruce Weber’s work. He seems to stand alone in his genre; actually, his work is near a genre in itself: both in subject and technique he sometimes appears to have created his own path. So it’s interesting to see work that came before and, I imagine, informed Bruce. Case in point Herbert List (w/ Magnum), who not only had a proclivity for the male form in a classical aesthetic and for a certain boys at play sensibility, if you will, but his work also has a similar feel technically to that Bruce is now doing. Frankly, if you’d shown me these top two pictures of List’s, I’d of assumed they were from a recent A&F catalog.
Needless to say, List’s photographs are beautiful. This first photo especially:
photo: Wrestling Boys, 1933. ©Herbert List/Magnum.
photo: Torso of Young Man, c. 1938. ©Herbert List/Magnum.
photo: Friends at Lake Starnberger, 1946. ©Herbert List/Magnum.
his photos are strikingly beautiful.
Such cute bodies….They could live even now :-))