Dreams of a butterfly

"Dear Butterfly,

From the place where I am now, I have a high speed internet access, it is a huge step for me, and I enjoy very much browsing the web, in order to check if my photographic art is still reminded, loved and known, in your XXIst century world. 

Among many web sites or groups or blogs, I noticed your "Rêves Siciliens" site, and as far I can see, it seems you know quite well Taormina and my photographic production, my aesthetic choices, and my favorite models....

I just want to thank you for keeping my vision and my dream alive and up to date, for adding words to what I tried to display through my photographic camera.

I think you understand so well that between photography and painting the border is very tiny, that between my Taormina models and their European viewers, there is such an alchemy of desire that what is felt and dreamt is more important than what is actually seen...

I would like to thank you warmly for your hard work, and also to ask you a basic question... Why a butterfly at the beginning of the XXIst century is so concerned by the photographic art, the aesthetic universe of Wilhem von Gloeden, a German photographer who was active in Taormina in the late XIXth c, in the early XXth c. ?

Yours, as always,

Wilhelm von Gloeden

"Dear Wilhelm,

Thanks so much for your email. I am so happy some Internet service providers made possible the communication between the past and the present times, between the dead ones and those who are still alive (for how long ?).

I am just a butterfly, I do not intend to live for a long time, I am just happy if I fly around, if I inspire dreams of beauty, if I inspire music or poetry...

I felt in love with your universe, dear Wilhem... I love these old photographs, some of them are albuminate, other ones are argentic ones, some of them have your stamp on the verso, or the date of the print, and sometimes you even signed the photograph on its recto...

I felt in love with Taormina, this Sicilian village above the sea, telling so many stories, from its ancient Greek past... I felt in love with the library of Tauromenium, a part of its catalogue was discovered by modern archaeologists. I felt in love with the Taormina's Greek theater, where the audience was in front of the stage and of the Aetna mountain... These very old stones are still singing the verses of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, I can even hear echoes of comic poets, is it Aristophanes or Menander ?

I also felt in love with your models and their photographs, dear Wilhelm... This kind of love did have a name in your time... Uranist love, pederasty, perhaps... Homosexuality ? Today, the key-words would be "gay" or even "queer"...

Your visual universe depicts and expresses something I did not find in the gay web and blogs. we have so many sites to browse, so many photos albums, so many videos. They do not bring me the fulfillement I feel while looking at your photographs, either in my own collection or in other museums, art galleries or web sites...

Looking at your photographs make me aware of what desire, of what my desire are about... A gaze, a shape, the curves of a body, a way to undress, a face expression, a young male body, lips half open, the way a late teen boys shows and hides at the same times, this is what makes me dream...

Desire and dream are very strange feelings. Why do I feel them, why did my feelings chose such or such model...?

Looking at your vintage photographs, my dear Wilhelm, I feel that some of your cute models can still listen to my voice, to the way I am looking to them... They were at the top of their blossoming age when you chose to photograph them... They are young for ever, they are the ideal of youth, and they were loved as such by all the travelers who came to Taormina and visited you.

What I love so much in your photographic art is its intemporal part... Your lads could be from 1st century BC, they could from late XIXc. AD, and they actually are from XIXc AD... But hey are so actual to me, at the beginning of XXI c. Yes, I felt in love with boys I will never meet, because they are just in a cimetary now... These boys made my dream and desire, they inspired me so many feelings, well, love was the main of them...

I can't explain why... I feel I could look for ever into the eyes of some of your models, into their souls, or just experiencing their whole body as a map to look upon, to caress, to feel close to mine... And I am dreaming about the words, the breathe we could share...

Each of your photographs, my dear Wilhelm, is just as a potential love story. Desire, sensuality and the feeling that such a boy is the one I could spend my life with, listening to his beauty, to his own language, to his pains and his joices...

Most of the boys I am in love with today are dead since a long time... But I love them anyway, because I feel so much my love for them, because I feel what their youth and their beauty expressed and express still today...

My dear Wilhelm, they are so many ways to love, so many cute lads to fall in love with...

Falling in love with a photograph is just loving a concept, a shade, a reflection...

A boy's gaze, or smile, or posture are just a concept, a share and a reflection....

My dear Wilhelm, what makes me dream and desire so much about your photographic work is just that:

young men to fall in love with. A young man could be hidden beyond a shade, a concept, a reflection...

Butterfly