The Photographic Work Helbig is in the archives of photographers in the German photo library Dresden (160,000 recordings, of which 60,000 color slides), the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg Philipps University Marburg (23,800 recordings, 11,000 to Greece and 6,000 to Italy) and in the Hamburg State Archives within of the holdings of the " German Society for Photography " archived. In the narcissistic game, men who are very well aware of their beauty step in front of the camera and say: I am human.
On the contrary, he knows how to make your personality and your self-confidence visible. The pictures of the naked young men never seem suggestive and Helbig never positions himself as a voyeur. Accordingly, the preface to Homo Sum says: He was more of a service provider who understood the character of capturing the personality of his models. In contrast to Bruce Weber, who prepared his photos in great detail, Helbig turned out to be a photographer who heavily involved his models. The photographs, some of which were taken in the 1950s, are seen in the tradition of Wilhelm von Gloeden and Wilhelm Plüschow, but can also be seen as anticipating a photographic perspective of e.g. The historical, social and geographical are merged in pictures and text into an informative and brilliant unit.Īfter his death in Mainz in 1986, nude photographs of young men were discovered in his estate. Photos of selected beauty and sophistication not only trace the landscape and panorama, but also go into detail the island's population has a fair interest. The photos have nothing of the smoothness and boredom that usually make picture books of this kind so unpleasant, and the text written by Konrad Helbig finally establishes the distance. Helbig distinguished himself as a travel photographer: Helbig was a rousing narrator whose lectures were always very well attended. A major exception to this are color slide positives, which were intended for his slide presentations. Helbig photographed mostly in black and white. The abundance and also the quality of his photographic work is great. in the travel magazine Merian or in the Atlantis - as well as photo books, such as the 1956 volume about Sicily.
Helbig worked both as a photographer and as an author of magazine articles - with publications e.g. In the following decades he traveled to the Mediterranean countless times. These cultural landscapes never let go of him. He was particularly interested in the Mediterranean cultures. Immediately afterwards, at the age of thirty, he began studying art history and archeology. He returned from Soviet captivity in 1947. Konrad Helbig was a soldier in the Soviet Union during World War II.