Art or pornography ? Perversion or innocence ? All those who travelled to Taormina in order to buy prints of the nude photos of von Gloeden probably did not think too much about such a dilemna. These photos opened too many doors and windows in the lives and souls of gay closeted men, in late XIXth and early XXth c. Europe.
The art of von Gloeden, however, was censored by Italian fascist police. Deleting original negatives meant deleting any chance to look again at a given picture, except if it was already printed in a few copies... Censorship and destruction of books, pictures, photographs are a crime against the future of mankind. In a given political or religious context, some officials decide about what is legal or not, what is authorized or not, what should be saved or deleted. It is indeed a huge responsability.
Whas was seen as an untolerable obscenity by Mussolini's police is now considered as art, as a precious archive about the history of photography, of Sicilia and of homoerotic art...
The surviving part of von Gloeden's photographic prints or negatives is now safe (for how long ?) in private collections, in galleries, in museums...
Being fascinated by von Gloeden's pics today (and by some other vintage photographs works too, such as Plüschow or Galdi) means that memory, history, time, vintage patina might be important and meaningful in today gay culture.
While the WWW provides us with a flow of daily new and commercial photos or videos of nude young men, involved or not in various sexual scenes and interplays, vintage photos of von Gloeden and other pioneers of homoerotic photography strike us today by their innocence...
For me, at least, they kept all their poetical and evocative power, they open so many doors, so many windows towards dreamt and imagined worlds...
Ooops... I have written this post in English... I hope it will make sense for my English as well as for my French speaking readers...
No comments:
Post a Comment