Magnum Gallery is pleased to present Under the Same Sun, a new exhibition conceived as a visual dialogue spanning several decades along the Mediterranean coast. The exhibition pairs the work of two Magnum photographers: a selection of Herbert List’s photographs of the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea from the 1930s to the 1950s, and Zied Ben Romdhane’s images of present-day Tunisia’s Mediterranean coastline.

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 the symbols of Greek antiquity, art, and myth. Concerned he would be persecuted as a gay man of 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 context, these images defy a fixed chronology.

Decades later, in present-day Tunisia, Ben Romdhane photographs the same sea and sun, capturing the mental state of his country’s youth. The selection is drawn primarily from his series The Escape, a winner of the 2024 World Press Photo Contest, and is accompanied by a poem written by the photographer himself. Through these two distinct perspectives, the seascape becomes a state of mind, and the body a vessel for desire, identity, home, and exile.

“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 Romdhane’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 Gallery Director Clémence Vichard-Larroque, Under the Same Sun will be open to the public at the Magnum Gallery and Bookstore in Paris, from June 27 to September 12

About The Authors

Herbert List (1903–1975) was a German photographer whose work bridged Surrealism and classical form. Trained initially in the coffee trade, List turned to photography in the early 1930s, developing a style rooted in the New Vision and Bauhaus movements while drawing on his deep affinity for classical antiquity. In 1936, as a gay man of Jewish heritage, he fled Nazi Germany, finding in Greece and Italy a refuge that would become central to his artistic vision. There, he photographed male nudes, ancient sculpture, and Mediterranean landscapes with a sensibility that fused eroticism, myth, and melancholy. List’s photographs are held in major institutional collections worldwide, and his legacy continues to be represented by the Herbert List Estate.