Thursday, December 22, 2011

About dream and desire...


"Dear Wilhelm,

Sorry to be back to you after such a long time... I was traveling abroad, so far away from Taormina... But I brought with me the sun of Sicily, the light of the San Domenico piazza, and the beauty of your models...

How could I forget them... They make me dream so much... I see them, I talk to them so much in my dreams... Your photographic eye made them so perfect, so relevant, so splendid, so desirable... Desire is such a strange thing... How could we desire a boy pictured on a photograph... ? The aura is more important than the body, the gaze is more important than touch, a photograph haunts his viewer longer than a body haunts its lover... At least, I think, I hope so...

I will never be tired to love your photographs, to love your models... You caught their youth, their beauty, what makes them so desirable, so lovable... Looking at your photographs is just reading a love story, a never ending love story, and day after day, I will say "I love you" to the boy you chose to focus on...

Am I loving a boy or a photograph ? I am loving beauty, intemporal beauty, hauting eyes, half open lips, waiting for a kiss, or about to say some loving words...

I am loving a boy from Athens or Sparta, from Alexandria or Rome, a blossoming boy at the peak of youth and beauty, just a flower that will last as far as youth does...

How to forget him, how to forget you... Each of your photograph is the first chapter of a love story, and the viewer should write its ending part... 

Loving a photograph is loving a boy for ever... Looking carefully at the photograph, I can feel the breathe, the warmth of your model, I can almost touch him and embrass him.... "Almost" is  what makes the difference... "Almost" is what will never put an end to my longing, to my love, to my desire, "almost" is what will allow the magic of your photograph to go on and on, for ever, for the fortunate viewer who will perhaps get it, after I disappeared...

Dear Wilhem, thanks so much for experimenting such a new way to write love poetry...

Yours, as always, Philip"

Von Gloeden Archive, Letter from Philip to W. von Gloeden, ca. 1912, call number 1912/00/05