The Magic of Photography

One day, you met von Gloeden in a street of your village and he kindly asked you if you would accept to model for him, just for a photographic session. Perhaps it was in 1898, or 1900, or even 1902, you don't remember exactly... Many of your friends in Taormina already did it, they told you they had fun, that the Baron was a nice guy, funny, generous and inspired... So you were quite curious and excited and you said: "Yes, why not...".

You got an appointment and at the fixed time, you were at the Baron's Villa...

You had a nice talk with him in the garden, among rare trees and sweet-smelling flowers, and you spend some times together, just looking at the expanded horizon, towards the sea, towards the Etna mountain, from the terrace.

When Gloeden invited you with his gentle voice to take your clothes off, you smiled, you were expecting it, you did not feel embarrassed, most of Taormina lads were accustomed to be naked together on the beach,  for lazy sun bathes or for swimming in the sea...

Then, the Baron put a large white clothe on your shoulders and a wreath of ivy and flowers  among your dark hairs. He told you unheard and fascinating stories, about guys you never met in Taormina, with such strange names as Plato, Pindar, Virgil or Theocritus, he told you about a world of heroes and young gods, about a forgotten world where beauty was shining everywhere, a world where white clothes around shoulders were like a frame for splendid young and naked bodies...

While listening to the Baron, you were forgetting its strange German accent mixed with the music of your Italian language, you were forgetting the stage set up, your artificial pose, you were forgetting your own name, Giovanni, and your real life as a fisherman, who had to get up so early every day to work on his father's ship... You were Alexis and Corydon, Daphnis and Lykinos, you were a cute epheb training in a gymnasium or a young shepherd desired by Apollo, or perhaps a young follower of Dionysius, wandering far from the city, where human paths can cross those of the gods...

And suddenly, you heard so many sounds, you remembered so many memories, you saw so many lights, that your forgot von Gloeden's camera, and your eyes shift to the left, towards invisible horizons you were the only one to contemplate...