Beauty

Wilhelm von Gloeden - Portrait

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Why does this portrait move me so much ? I love everything in this young man face... The headband across the hairs, the roses as a symbol of flying youth, the almond eyes whose outline is emphasized by a pen... A delicate drawing adds the ultimate touch to a sensitive photograph...

As always, I felt in love with the face of a dreaming lad, displaying his beauty to the viewer, looking elsewhere, beyond the photograph, looking inside, looking to his soul...

Von Gloeden's photographic art displays as much as it hides. It leaves so much space for imagination, for desire and feelings...

Von Gloeden's photographs as always are at the same time the very peak of modernity, with a brand new technology, and the archaeological remain of a very old time, Ancient Greece, with its ephebs, with the poetry of their beauty, with the ethics of the love they inspired to older man...

During the late XIXth c., Greece, classical culture and literatures, ancient statues or frescoes, Greek and Latin poets, Mediterranean landscape and light were a needed alibi for all those who loved in a different way and who needed photographs to mirror their desire, their vision, their identity.

Wilhelm von Gloeden did not shoot photographs. He offered mirrors to so many men of his time. And beyond.