Signature Drop #005: Herbert List x Zied Ben Romdhane

“Before reaching the sea,/drops of water dry upon his skin,/and the whiteness of salt remains,” writes Tunisian photographer Zied Ben Romdhane in his original poem, which accompanies three hand-signed prints for this edition of Signature Drop, bringing together the work of Ben Romdhane and German photographer Herbert List.

Almost 90 years separate List’s photographs along the Mediterranean Sea in Italy and Greece and Ben Romdhane’s project The Escape, set on a different shore of the Mediterranean, in his native Tunisia. Yet the affinities in their work form a visual dialogue, each portraying the sea, the body, marble ruins, and a reflective state of mind.

Presented side by side in Magnum Gallery’s latest exhibition Under the Same Sun, their work becomes a conversation of desire, identity, and place. Now, Signature Drop #005 unites selected images from the exhibition as collectable prints, available to collect until September 10 at midnight EDT.

“The idea started because there are some similarities in the spirit — the way that I photograph and List photographs. There are some points in common — the sea, the Mediterranean, the light, the bodies — but also the way we photograph those things,” reflects Ben Romdhane.

As a gay man with Jewish grandparents, List fled Nazi Germany in 1936, seeking refuge in Italy and Greece, before returning to Germany in 1941. During this period, he deemed himself an amateur photographer, inspired by the growing art form. “He wanted to say his work was driven by a love for the medium and the creative process rather than looking for the demand of a market,” says Peer-Olaf Richter of the Herbert List Estate.

List captured images of friends and acquaintances among ancient temples and seaside cliffs, their bodies echoing the statuesque physique of the Greek gods. In exile, he was able to carve out a visual landscape steeped in sensuality, a counter-narrative to the possibilities of war as Hitler began to remilitarize Germany. The Mediterranean coast allowed him to explore questions of intimacy, physicality and longing, despite the threatening political landscape in Europe.

“This document of a private life and the result of a really elaborate and considered creative process, exists in the same frame that makes List’s work still speak to contemporary audiences. For me, it’s also the point at which List’s work connects most naturally to that of a contemporary photographer, to Zied’s work,” explains Richter.

Decades later, Ben Romdhane photographs present-day Tunisia, more than ten years after the 2011 revolution, capturing the current mentality of youth. Behind the dreamlike metaphors in The Escape — a winner in the 2024 World Press Photo Contest — lies an ominous sense of instability, what the photographer calls a “feeling of malaise” about the future, politics, and identity.

Emphasizing form, gesture and light, Ben Romdhane and List’s images defy a fixed chronology. List’s photograph of two plaster masks in 1937 Santorini is echoed in Ben Romdhane’s portrait of two young men gazing towards the horizon in Tunis in 2023. Both artists suggest a timeless tension, exploring what is left unsaid, evoking both freedom and vulnerability.

“Sometimes when I look at their work and the similarities, it’s where List’s images leave off, Zied’s work starts, with a distinct voice of its own,” Richter says. Part of this continuum is through challenging binaries: where List explores male eroticism and destabilizing masculine norms, Ben Romdhane depicts same-sex couples and the contemporary body occupying a new territory.

Photography and poetry are both capable of heightening the everyday experience, yet a poem is composed in a longer space of time — it is meditated over, while a photograph is instantaneous, often involving spontaneity and serendipity. Ben Romdhane’s poem included in this Signature Drop offers a more expansive rhythm to the images, describing a tension beyond what we see in the frames: “Here,/after betrayals/after civilizations/and marble columns/we enter the age of silence.”

Shop these exclusive, time-limited Signature Drop prints online at the Magnum Store, available to collect until September 10 at midnight EDT.