Konrad Helbig

Konrad Helbig (1917-1986) was a German photographer, art historian and archaeologist. Helbig was born in Leipzig, Saxony (Germany) in 1917.

Helbig was a soldier in Wehrmacht, fighting in the Soviet Union during World War II. He was taken into captivity as prisoner of war. Helbig was able to return in 1947 from the Soviet captivity. Immediately thereafter, at the age of thirty, he began studying art history and archeology. He was particularly interested in the Mediterranean cultures. After graduation, he traveled countless times to the Mediterranean over the next few decades. Helbig worked both as a photographer and author of journal articles, with publications such as travel magazine Merian and Atlantis. He also published picture books, such as the volume on Sicily (Sizilien), published in 1956. Helbig mainly photographed in black and white. An essential exception, however, are color slide positives, which were intended for his slide lectures.

Helbig was a captivating storyteller whose lectures were always well attended. As a travel photographer, Helbig stands out:

"The photos have nothing of the smoothness and boredom about them that make picture books of this kind so generally unpleasant, and the text written by Konrad Helbig finally sets the distance. Photos of exquisite beauty and refinement not only capture the landscape and the panorama, they also go into detail; the island population is the just interest ... as well. Historical, social and geographical is fused in image and text to informative and brilliant unity." (from "Review of Archipelagus" in Die Zeit, 14 Jun 1963 No.24)

Helbig is mostly known for intimate images of young Sicilian men. Only after his death in Mainz in 1986 were the nude photographs of young men discovered in his estate. The photographs, some of which were taken in the 1950s, are seen in the tradition of Wilhelm von Gloeden and Guglielmo Plüschow. In contrast to Bruce Weber, who carefully composes his photography, Helbig proves to be a photographer who brings his models' personalities into the composition. In this, Helbig was more of a service provider who understood the way of capturing the personality of his models. Accordingly, the preface to Homo Sum says:

"The pictures of the naked young men never look suggestive and Helbig never positions himself as a voyeur. On the contrary, he knows how to visualize their personality and their self-confidence. In narcissistic playfulness, men who are well aware of their beauty step in front of the camera and say: I am human. Homo sum." (from Homo Sum, 2003)

The photographic work of Helbig is in the archives of the photographers in the Deutsche Fotothek in Dresden including 160,000 shots, of which 60,000 are color slides, in the picture archive Foto Marburg of the University of Marburg (23,800 shots, of which 11,000 are photographs of Greece and 6,000 of Italy) and in the State Archive Hamburg within the collection of the "German Society for Photography" archive. His works are also in collections of several private foundations and museums in Germany.