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Image 1 — Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"
Image 2 — Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"
Image 3 — Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"
Image 4 — Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"
Image 5 — Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"
Image 6 — Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"
Image 7 — Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"
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Picked up a 1953 first edition of Herbert List’s "Licht über Hellas"

Wanted to share this piece of history I just added to the shelf. This is the original 1953 print of Herbert List’s Licht über Hellas (published by Callwey), and holding it in person is wild. It’s huge—about 36x29cm—with massive, full-page plates.

The interesting part is the history behind it. List shot these surreal photos of Greek ruins and landscapes between 1937 and 1941. He was basically ready to release the book back then, but WWII completely derailed it. Because List was gay and of Jewish descent, the Nazis banned him from publishing, and when German troops invaded Greece in '41, he had to flee back to Germany. Some of his original plates for this project were actually lost forever in a Paris hotel while he was running from the war.

The book finally saw the light of day in 1953. List's style (fotografia metafisica) uses that intense Mediterranean sun to create these crazy, high-contrast geometric shadows. Instead of looking like basic travel photography, the statues and temples look like dreamscapes.

Highly recommend hunting down a copy if you collect mid-century photobooks.

u/_rem_ — 5 days ago