Jardin secret

In my von Gloeden's photographs collection, I think this one is among the rarest, the most precious... I have never seen it in any modern Gloeden's books...

I love the purity of its structure... A wall, a tree, a jar, light and shade, and a teen boy...

I love the infinite grace of this young male body, its visible beauty as well as the way a part of it is hidden under a clothe... I love the curves, the inflections, the smoothness, the curly and tousled hairs... I love the profile of his face, the way his body is at the same time so relaxed and tensed, to keep the posture...

I love the set up of this photograph... It is in Taormina, in the late 90's of the XIXth century... It could be a scene from Greek antiquity, and this boy could be the listener of a Socrates' lesson of philosophy...

I love what is intemporal in this photograph... What it displays could speak and sing for viewers in Antiquity, in Renaissance, in XIXth century and today as well...

I love the way desire, longing, appeal, sensitiveness are staged within a border when one can look at, admire, dream about, but not touch...

I don't know the name of this ragazzo of Taormina, in the late XIXth century... But thanks to von Gloeden's photograph, he became immortal... and he is young for ever, even if he is now just dust in the soil of Taormina's cemetery...

If you repost this photograph of my collection, please link to my blog...

Butterfly

Taormina 1926

1926, Gloeden, Taormina. Five years before his death, Wilhelm von Gloeden signed this photograph. The buyer probably asked for this signature. He (or she ?) considered this photograph as a work of art, as a unique picture, as precious as a painting by a famous artist. And von Gloeden was willing to sign the prints of his photographs, in order to provide them with their uniqueness, with the special quality of a unique artifact.

Photography is a mechanical and an industrial art, allowing the reproduction of many copies of a single image, according to Walter Benjamin's famous statement. But a photograph is also a unique artifact, through the way it was printed, through its patina, through the chemical processes that fix light and shades in an unpredictable way.

This photograph is 86 years old. This blossoming boy is most likely ashes and dust in the Taormina's cemetery.

Through this photograph, however, this Taormina boy is young forever, he is a blossoming boy, as the flowers and leaves surrounding him.

I find in this photograph a Von Gloeden's trademark... a unique way to displaying the beauty of a young man and to concealing the focus of his mind, of his gaze, of his soul...

This photograph was conceived to inspire love and desire. In 2012, this photograph still inspires them. Love and desire.

But I don't know what I love and desire the most... The sensual display of an ephebe's body... Or the mystical focus of a gaze and a soul...