Salone “Mito di Giasone e Medea”

Herbert List is the champion of “metaphysical photography”. This term has been coined specifically to describe his work, in homage to the famous artistic movement by which it’s inspired. His typically classical and austere compositions have their roots in ancient Greek and Italian art. He frequently visited those places, and during a trip to the South in 1951, the year in which he joined the famous Magnum agency, he created the project presented in this exhibition. It’s made up of a series of 41 photographs taken on the Sicilian island of Favignana, and it represents both a fundamental document of local history and evidence of the German author’s artistic maturity. The work is centred on the typical tuna processing and in particular slaughter, a tradition that was alive in the local population at the time but destined to disappear. In a rare and calibrated sequence, List celebrates life and death, treating animals as mythical figures and observing the island workers as the last custodians of an archaic knowledge.