Herbert List (German, 1903-1975) was a classically educated artist who combined a love of photography with a fascination for Surrealism and Classicism. List rose to become the most prominent photographer of the Fotografia Metafisica 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."
"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."