Under the Same Sun: Herbert List x Zied Ben Romdhane

From June 27, 2026 to September 12, 2026, a new curation presented at Magnum Gallery and Bookstore in Paris pairs the work of two Magnum photographers: a selection of Herbert List’s photographs set near the Mediterranean (and Baltic) Sea from the 1930s to the 1950s, and Zied Ben Romdhane’s images along the Mediterranean coast in present-day Tunisia.

Herbert List’s images take shape around the contours of the Mediterranean, particularly Greece and Italy, portraying bodies and landscapes as archetypes among the ruins, and evoking symbols of Greek antiquity, art and myth.

In present-day Tunisia, Ben Romdhane photographs the same sea and sun decades later, capturing the mental state of youth in his home country. Through these different perspectives, the seascape becomes a state of mind, and the body a capsule for desire, identity, home and exile.

Concerned he would be persecuted as a gay man with Jewish heritage, List fled Germany in 1936 as the Nazis rose to power. Greece and Italy became his safe havens, where radiant bodies, sculpted marble and the sea formed a sensual landscape, an alternative reality to the imminent war. During his time in exile, List could more freely explore the tensions between physicality and transience. Emphasizing form and gesture over cultural or political contexts, these images defy a fixed chronology.

Accompanied by a poem written by the photographer, the selection of Ben Romdhane’s images are predominantly from his series The Escape, a winner in the 2024 World Press Photo Contest. He creates a dreamlike, metaphorical portrait of youth in Tunisia today, following the 2011 revolution, which ended the country’s 23-year dictatorship.

Under the tenderness and vulnerability in Ben Romdhane’s photographs, there is an ominous sense of instability, what the photographer calls a “feeling of malaise” about the future, political changes, and both cultural and personal identity.

Photographing almost a century apart from different shores of the Mediterranean — with the exception of List’s 1935 image of a nude in Tunisia — List and Ben Romdhane’s photographs speak to disparate contexts in time. Yet, side by side, they are visual companions in form as well as in meaning, creating a dialogue between myth and the everyday, symbol and setting, the individual and community.

“Ben Romdhane’s contemporary images gain a historical dimension through their elective affinity with List’s work, while List’s photographs, nearly 90 years old, reach into the present alongside Ben Romdane’s vision,” says Peer-Olaf Richter of the Herbert List Estate.

Under the Same Sun brings together echoes of the past with an unwritten future. As Ben Romdhane writes in his poem: “Here/after betrayals/after civilizations/and marble columns/we enter the age of silence.”

Curated by Ben Romdhane, Richter, and Senior Gallery Manager Clémence Vichard-Larroque, Under the Same Sun will be open to the public at the Magnum Gallery and Bookstore, 2 impasse Delaunay 75011, from June 27 to September 12.

Works exhibited are available to acquire.
For inquiries, please contact the gallery staff directly or email gallery@magnumphotos.com.