Drawing and Photography

"Dear Jean-Xavier de Combeloup,

Thanks so much for sending me this drawing. It is illuminating the wall of my bedroom, in my Taormina house, Piazza San Domenico... I could almost regret I did not spend more energy in learning the art of painting, and that I chose to devote myself to photography, this modern and mechanic art. Your drawing is unique... My photographs could be reproduced in many copies, even if each print has its own material features... Walter Benjamin, a German like me, wrote a beautiful text about the status of art in the age of mechanic reproduction...

My photographs are a window towards an horizon, towards a gaze, towards an obvious frame, a contrast, black and white, light and shade.

Your drawings, dear Jean-Xavier, have other qualities... I like in them what is indefinite, what is just a sketch, I love the blurred aura around the outlines of a body, between black, red and white... I love too the perfect pose, the languidness of the body as well as the gaze's acuity, the skin velvety as well as the shades' gradation, the smoothness of the chest as well as the lips expression, half-closed, half-open, just silent before expressing, perhaps, a few loving words...

Just like me, you read Strato and Theocritus, Ovid and Plato, and you dreamt about Alcibiades and about Antinoos as well, and about all the young shepherds who inspired Arcadian dreams...

Desire is just a particular hamonic, through which some pictures are vibrating to the gaze, my photographs, sometimes, your drawings, quite often...

There is no desire without an horizon... There is no beauty that cannot inspire desire... There is no desire if one is unable to listen to beauty... women, men, young men, some human beings allow this music to be heard... Looking at is listening to... One cannot desire without loving music, without loving silence...

Yours, as always,

Wilhelm von Gloeden"

Von Gloeden Archive, Letter from W. von Gloeden to J.X. de Combeloup, date unknown, call number: special request 0123.