Camera Obscura

"My dear Wilhelm,

I am very grateful for the new photograph you sent me... It is just sublime, in its composition, in its intent, in what it invites me to dream and think about... There is a wall and a body, a jar and flesh, white and brown, plants and a bird in a cage, a boy and a column.

I know you chose the frame and the angles, light and shades, and that you shot this photograph just as one catches a flying away moment...

Giovanni is splendid and his muscular body would have been an inspiration for Michel Angelo, for his frescoes on the Sistina Chapel ceiling... What a beautiful depiction of youth and grace, of body and mind, of balance and thought !

Your photograph, maestro, my dear friend, makes me dream and think... Giovanni is looking through the window into an obscure room, into the camera obscura, where light and shapes are printed forever on the albuminate paper sheet.

This photograph is an hymn to what is visible or invisible, to what Giovanni is looking at and what I will miss for ever. I can see Giovanni so focussed in his contemplation, in his gaze from the outside to the inside... Your Taormina lads, Wilhelm, are sometimes so strange...

I love this photograph, because it makes me imagine what I will never see, that is why Giovanni is leaning that way, why he is so focussed onto what he sees within the camera obscura... 

This photograph is an allegory of photography....

If I try to listen to your photograph, Wilhelm, my good old friend, I can hear a song, the song of a bird inside a cage. It is also a Sicilian song, an immemorial song that is sung at the top of Taormina rocks, since the most remote antiquity... "Carpe diem", says this love song, this song of wisdom... "Carpe diem", youth does not last for ever and even the most beautiful photographs will fade away, sometimes in the future, there will be only white on a white background, a solar wall to desire and to love..."

Philip, Letter to Wilhelm von Gloeden, june 6, 1902 (Von Gloeden Archive, call number 1902/06/04).