Herbert List, Vittorio de Sica - Napoli - 1968

VERY SCARCE, WONDERFUL FIRST ITALIAN EDITION OF THE PHOTOBOOK CLASSIC -
about Naples in Italy ("Napoli e i suoi personaggi").

Photos by genious German photographer Herbert List (1903-1975), who worked for magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Life, and was associated with Magnum Photos.
Text by Vittorio de Sica (1901-1974), famous Italian film director and actor and a leading figure in the neorealist movement.

'The pictures I took spontaneously - with a bliss-like sensation, as if they had long inhabited my unconscious - were often more powerful than those I had painstakingly composed. I grasped their magic as in passing.'
- Herbert List -

THIS IS THE LAST EXCLUSIVE PHOTOBOOK AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com in 2025 -
with more than 100 great lots from my personal collection and from recent acquisitions.

With the beautiful original dustjacket extremely hard to find.
Especially in the original Italian edition which is much more rare than the German edition which came out 6 (!) years earlier.
The title "Napoli" was never reprinted, so the original in both languages is very scarce now and very sought-after.

Like always 5Uhr30.com guarantees detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance, and of course, combined shipping - worldwide.

"The austere, classically posed black-and-white compositions by Herbert List, particularly his homoerotic male nudes, taken in Italy and Greece being influential in modern photography and contemporary fashion photography.
In 1929 Herbert List met Andreas Feininger who inspired his greater interest in photography and gave him a Rolleiflex camera. From 1930 he began taking portraits of friends and shooting still life; was influenced by the Bauhaus and artists of the surrealist movements, Man Ray, Giorgio De Chirico and Max Ernst; and created a surrealist photograph titled Metaphysique in a style he called fotografia metafisica in homage to De Chirico, his most important influence during this period.
A trip to Paris allowed him to take portraits of Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard, Georges Braque, Jean Arp, Joan Miró, and others.
In 1951, Herbert List met Robert Capa, who invited him to work as a contributor to Magnum, but he rarely accepted assignments. For the next decade he produced copious work in Italy. During this time he also started using a 35 mm film camera and a telephoto lens. He was influenced by his Magnum colleague Henri Cartier-Bresson as well as the Italian neorealist film movement. In the 1950s he also shot portraits of Marino Marini, Paul Bowles, W. H. Auden, and Marlene Dietrich in 1960. Over the period 1949–62 he visited Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Mexico, and the Caribbean."
(Wikipedia)

5Uhr30.com says MANY THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT THIS YEAR -
making our single-seller photobook auctions on Catawiki so successful.
Ecki Heuser & team are wishing ALL THE BEST TO YOU AND YOURS for 2026.

Rizzoli Editore, Milan. 1968. First Italian edition, first printing.

Hardcover in linen with dustjacket. 230 x 280 mm. 208 pages. Photos: Herbert List. Layout: Herbert List and H.P. Willberg. Text: Vittorio de Sica. Text in Italian.

Condition:
Book inside and outside excellent, fresh and flawless, clean with no marks and with no foxing. Dustjacket with impressive fresh front and almost complete with no bigger missing parts; some longer tears (acid-free) taped from behind, but at the top of the spine and at the bottom left corner of the rear side also awful yellow trace of former tape and the attempt to tape from the front. Overall book in very fine condition, dustjacket in good condition only.

Great photobook about Naples by Herbert List in the very scarce Italian edition -
with the super beautiful, very scarce original dustjacket.

'Herbert List was a classically educated artist who combined a love of photography with a fascination for surrealism and classicism.
Born into a prosperous Hamburg merchant family, List began an apprenticeship at a Heidelberg coffee dealer in 1921 while studying literature and art history at Heidelberg University. During travels for the coffee business between 1924-28, the young List began to take photographs, almost without any pretensions to art.
In 1930, though, his artistic leanings and connections to the European avant-garde brought him together with the photographer Andreas Feininger, who introduced his new friend to the Rolleiflex, a more sophisticated camera that allowed a deliberate composition of images. Under the dual influence of the surrealist movement on the one hand, and of Bauhaus artists on the other, List photographed still life and his friends, developing his style. He has described his images as “composed visions where [my] arrangements try to capture the magical essence inhabiting and animating the world of appearances.”
After leaving Germany in 1936 for political and personal reasons, he turned his hobby into a profession. Working in Paris and London, he met George Hoyningen-Huene, who referred him to “Harper’s Bazaar.” Dissatisfied with the challenges of fashion photography, List instead focused on composing still lifes in his studio. The images produced there would later be compared to the paintings of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, and paved the way for List’s role as the most prominent photographer of the Fotografia Metafisica style.
Greece became List’s primary interest from 1937 to 1939. After his first visit to the antique temples, sculptures and landscapes, his first solo show opened in Paris in the summer of 1937. Publications in Life, Photographie, Verve and Harper’s Bazaar followed, and List began work on his first book, Licht Ueber Hellas, which wasn’t published until 1953.
Working in Athens, List hoped to escape the war but was forced by invading troops to return to Germany in 1941. Because of his Jewish background, he was forbidden to publish or work officially in Germany. Several works, stored in a hotel in Paris, have been lost.
Portraits of Berard, Cocteau, Honegger and Picasso during a short visit to Paris and a series on the Panoptikum in Vienna had characterized List’s main work before the war ended in 1945. In 1946, he photographed the ruins of post-war Munich and took the job of art editor of Heute, an American magazine for the German public.
In 1951, List met Robert Capa, who convinced him to work as a contributor to Magnum, but he rarely accepted assignments. He turned his interest towards Italy from 1950 to 1961, photographing everything from street scenes to contemplative photo-essays, from architectural views to portraits of international artists living in Italy.
In 1953, he discovered the 35mm camera and the telephoto lens. His work became more spontaneous and was influenced by his Magnum colleague Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Italian Neo-Realism film movement.
Over the next few years, he completed several books, including Rom, Caribia, Nigeria and Napoli, this one in collaboration with Vittorio de Sica.
In the final decade of his life, List’s interest in photography was finally fading out. He followed some publications for his 70th birthday with interest but declined offers for retrospectives of his work. From then on, he focused all his attention to his collection of Old Master drawings.
By the time he died in Munich in 1975, his photographs had been almost forgotten. Interest has revived recently, though, thanks to a fine monograph published by Schirmer Mosel and many exhibitions. His work is represented in the greatest collection of photography, from the MOMA NY to the V&A in London, The Getty Museum in LA to the Pompidou Center in Paris.'
(Magnum website)