Excerpts from Herbert Tobias entry on Wikipedia:
Tobias was a German photographer best known for his fashion photography during the 1950s. He also drew critical praise for his portrait studies, his photographs of Russia during World War II and his homoerotic pictures of men.
In 1942 Tobias was drafted into the German Nazi army and was sent to the Eastern Front. Shortly before the end of the war he deserted and was captured by the Americans on the Western Front. He was released at the end of 1945.
In 1948, while staying in Heidelberg he began a relationship with a civilian employee of the American Forces of Occupation. In 1950 both men were denounced under § 175 of the German Criminal Code. They moved to Paris.
In Paris Tobias worked as a retouched for German photographer Willy Maywald who introduced him to the fashion world. In 1953 Tobias' first published photos appeared in Vogue. In the same year, after resisting arrest during a police raid on a gay establishment, he was thrown out of France and returned to Heidelberg.
Soon his fashion photographs began to appear in West German magazines. And November 1953, out of over 18,000 entrants, he won first prize in a highly lucrative competition by Frankfurter Illustrierten Zeitung.
Through publication of his work in many high-class magazines Tobias had become, by 1956, an established figure in West German fashion scene.
During the 1960s, Tobias style fell out of favor in Fashion magazines. But in 1972 he found a new avenue for his photographs - various gay and pornographic magazines.
By 1981, with some high profile exhibitions of his work in Amsterdam and Berlin, Tobias working on a book with a collection of his nudes.
Tobias became seriously ill in February 1982 and died in August of the same year. He was one of the first high-profile victims of AIDS in Germany. He was buried in Altona Cemetery in Hamburg. In 2007 his grave site was declared an Ehrengrab ("grave of honour") by the Hamburg Senate.
