List’s metaphysical photography confronts the views of the squares and streets of Rome; portraits of great Italian intellectuals sit beside faces met by chance, images of a generation just out of the Second World War. An elegant, erotic and romantic vision of the Mediterranean alternates with pictures of the newly opened Termini station. A great photographer, attentive traveller, refined art collector and poet of vision, he built images of perfect formal rigour and heartbreaking beauty; from the 1950s his pictures of southern Europe, of an Italy to discover and a dazzling Greece, enchanted generations of photographers and artists. A play of shadows, a reflection on the sea, a ray of sun in the alleys of Rome: in every frame he could stop fragments of reality perfect in their combination of light and form.