Academic Study

 

Wilhelm von Gloeden (Private collection)

What are you thinking about?

 

 

  

Wilhelm von Gloeden — Albumen Print — Details — Private collection

Smile

Von Gloeden — Albumen print  (detail) — July 1897

Private collection

"Il Signore Barone was so funny... He spoke Italian with a weird German accent... And instead of "si", he said "ja ja ja"... So funny...

This photo was shot at the San Domenico monastery, in the cloister. Il Barone asked us to undress. The both of us were nude... Actually, at the time, we were used to hang on with our friends totally naked... At the beach, while swimming, while fishing... And sometimes in the mountain as well, at the peak of the heatwave, when we  were looking after our fathers goats...

At that time, I did not understand why Il Signore Barone wanted us to be naked... He was telling us about poets, gods and heroes, about Greeks and Romans, about the beauty of youth, about art and painting...

Il Signore Barone was very kind to us... He was generous too, and he offered small gifts, sometimes money for the photo session. 

Usually, it took quite a lot of time. Il Barone was checking the light, the background. He was cleaning us when we were a bit dirty and dusty, after working in the mountain or in the fields of olive-trees...

He was fine tuning our poses arms, legs, face, gaze, the way we should stand up, the way we should look at him.

Il Signore Gloeden was a true artist, like a painter, and sometimes like a sculptor, when he touched us to turn our body in the right direction, to have the best view on the small of our backs, on our shoulders, on our chests, on our tighs and legs...

"Don't move, don't breathe !  Bellisimi ragazzi, perfetto, grazie tanto, ja ja ja ja ja !"

I should share with you a little secret. 

You probably wonder why I am smiling that way on this photograph...I tried hard to stop a laughter actually...

You know why ? Because while we were standing on each side of this column, with my friend, totally naked, il Padre Alberto, il Priest di Taormina, entered the cloister.

He saw us. he raised his eyes to heaven and we heard: "Madre Dio Madonna Gesu Paster noster Ave Maria..."

Il Barone waved to him: "Hello hello, Padre, buon giorno !!!"

Il Padre Alberto and il Signore Gloeden were wery good friends, actually... Today, I suspect that Alberto was not totally unconcerned about Gloeden's photographs and the boys of Taormina...

Perhaps Il Signore gave him an albumen print of this photo, shot in the San Domenico's cloister, in july 1897, if I remember correctly...

So this is why I smile on this photograph... And just thinking about the Padre entering the cloister  and looking at the two of us, standing nude on each side of the column,   makes me laugh again today, so many years after..."

Von Gloeden Archive, Handwritten diary of G. T. , 1930. Call number: 1930/18

(GT was featured on many Gloeden's photographs. He was one of his favorite models)

Ode to Spring

Blossoming almond-trees

Blossoming boys

The spring is coming...

Taormina, at the end of XIXc century

Wilhelm von Gloeden — Albumen print — Private collection

Le berger de Taormina / Taormina's shepherd (featuring Von Gloeden's dog)

 

 

 

 

Wilhelm von Gloeden — Albumen print — ca 1899 — Private collection

Boys of Taormina

 

Wilhelm von Gloeden — Albumen original print — Private collection

Les photographies de von Gloeden racontent des histoires. Elles s'inscrivent dans une tradition, dans une mythologie. Elles sont des poèmes visuels, la traduction visuelle des épigrammes de Straton, Méléagre et autres poètes de la Muse garçonnière. Elles disent le désir et la séduction, la beauté et la jeunesse, l'essence des garçons et l'initiation vers l'âge adulte...

Von Gloeden's photographs tell stories. They belong to a tradition, to a mythology. They are visual poems, the visual translation of Strato, Meleager  and so many other poets of the Mousa paidiké... They tell stories of desire and seduction, of beauty and youth, the essence of boyhood and initiation towards manhood...

Who were you ? / Qui étais-tu ?

 

 

 

Wilhelm von Gloeden — Portrait (albumen print) — No number on the reverse.

(Private collection)

Qui étais-tu, jeune homme au si beau visage ? 

Quel était ton nom, garçon de Taormina ?

Quelle a été ton histoire, ta vie, ton destin ?

Etais-tu un berger dans les montagnes ?

Cultivais-tu les oliviers ?

Ou étais-tu un marin, un pêcheur ?

A quoi rêves-tu, avec tes beaux yeux perdus dans le vide ?

Sais-tu qu'aujourd'hui ton visage, ton regard me font rêver ?

Je penserai à toi

La prochaine fois 

Que j'irai à Taormina...

Who where you, cute lad with such a beautiful face?

What was your name, boy from Taormina?

What was your story, you life, your fate?

Were you a shepherd in the mountains?

Were you cultivating olive tree?

Or were you a sailor, a fisherman?

What are you dreaming about, with your beautiful eyes lost in the void?

Do you know today your face, your eyes make me dream?

I will remember and think about you

New time

I will go to Taormina

Portrait sublime / Sublime Portrait

 

Von Gloeden 

No number, no stamp, no date on the reverse

Albumen print, private collection. 

"Dear Wilhelm,

The portrait I bought from you is now framed and it is on the wall of my bedroom !

It makes me dream... It reminds me so many fond memories of my stay in Taormina, last spring...

Since I attended the photo session, and I remember quite well where and when it took place, I can easily decipher the face expression of your delicious model... Giovanni ? Luigi ? Marco... I am confused...

But I remember... You told him stories... You read poems... Theocritus and Strato's poems, if I am correct...

You told him: "Bellissimo, perfetto, bellissimo ragazzo... Don't move, don't breathe !"

I had the idea of the flower between his lips... "Brilliant idea !" you said...

It was spring in Taormina... Everything was blossoming, trees and... boys...

I love so much this photo, dear Wilhelm... And your model from Taormina too, obviously... He is gorgeous... So classical... He could be a boy from IIId century BC... He is the dreamt ephebe... I just love him... He is my dream, my icon... Please tell him... I am sure he reminds me...

I will try to visit you again next spring... 

Wilhelm, your photographic art is the mirror of my heart, of my soul...

Yours, as always

Philip"

Von Gloeden Archive, Letter from Philip to W. von Gloeden, September 1896. Call number: 1896/35

Pasqualino

Von Gloeden, Portrait of Pasqualino Stracuzzi.

On the back: stamp "W. von Gloeden, Taormina (Sicilia). Proprieta artistisca)

and number "1321" written with a pencil.

Private collection.

"My dear Wilhelm,

Thanks so much for this so beautiful portrait of my favorite Taormina boy, Pasqualino...

He is so beautiful, so expressive, so unique...

Bellissimo ragazzo, molto bello...

There is no beauty without spirituality.

There is no body without a soul.

There is no love without a cult.

I still remember fondly my stay at Taormina, last fall, and my visit at your house.

And I am so grateful for meeting Pasqualino and having some... well... some private and intimate time with him...

I love him. I love him so much.  He is just so... Well, you know...

I adore this new portrait of him...

I imagine he is praying: "Please, come back... Come back soon... I miss you..."

Please, Wilhelm, my friend, tell him; I miss him too. I miss him so badly.

I hope to travel to Sicily at the end of spring. When cherry trees are blossoming, as the boys of Taormina...

Please, Wilhelm, my friend, please tell Pasqualino that I will be back soon.

And that my first time in Taormina will be for him...

We will meet again in his so delicious casa, at the top of the village.

I know how to enter the house (and his room !) without being heard or noticed by his parents... I know his father does not know... !

Yours, as always...

Edwin, from Baltimore
Novembre 1899"

Von Gloeden Archive, Letter from Edwin to W. von Gloeden, November 1899. Call number: 1899/27.

My dear Wilhelm...

"My dear Wilhelm,

Sorry for this so long pause in my posts, in my blog Rêves Siciliens... I spent the last two months in Taormina, I visited the Protestant cemetery and I put a few roses on your grave...

I have seen the end of the Sicilian spring, the beginning of the Sicilian summer, I have smelt the perfumes of so many flowers, I have seen the light and the colors, I felt the warmth and the cool evenings...

I spent hours dreaming at the scenic landscape where Mount Aetna caresses a blue sea..

And never I was tired looking at Taormina, at its walls and roofs, on the cliffs, against the mountain...

I feel I shared your gaze and your vision, I breathed the same air you did, a century ago, I had the same feeling to be in a land loved by the ancient gods of Greece and Rome, a land where beauty is everywhere, in the sky and in the sea, in the flowers and in the blossoming boys....

I spent to much time, dreaming about the landscape, dreaming about you, dreaming about your gorgeous models I love so much...

Dear Wilhelm, I am still on the terrace of my hotel, I am sipping tea... I hope you will join me... Please, tell Pasqualino, Il Moro, Luigi, Pietro, Domenico, the Faun and so many others of your models to join me...

They will be most welcome... It is impossible to stay in Taormina without inviting all the beautiful and young forever ghosts haunting this place...

Please join me...

Yours as always...

Butterfly"

Vintage prints

Blogs, books, .jpg files and modern reprints are fine....

But nothing replaces a vintage photographic print of von Gloeden, of von Plüschow, of Vincenzo Galdi, the sensual inventor of gay pornographic photographic art

There is this unique sepia color, and also the stamp of the photographer on the back, and sometimes the handwritten number of the photograph...

There is also the fact that a vintage photographic print is a unique artifact, whose tones and contrast are different from any other print...

And each vintage photograph has its own secrete story to tell you: who was its first buyer, through which private collections was it transmitted ?

There is a place in Paris, where a unique Art Gallery traces out and collects the most beautiful, the most sensual vintage prints of von Gloeden's photographs...

The Art Gallery "Au bonheur du jour", and Nicole Canet, its main creative force, are devoted to saving these vintage photographs as well as many other curiosa, paintings, drawings and erotica, mirroring the many ways to love and to be loved, in our human condition....

There is currently a unique exhibition of almost 60 vintage photographic prints of the masters of Italian nude male photography... All these vintage prints are for sale...

You should definitely visit Nicole Canet's Gallery

11 rue Chabanais, 75002 Paris

and you could visit too here...

website

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...

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.

Together

"Dear Wilhelm,

Why, do you ask me... Why someone living in the early XXIst century is so tuned to your photographic art ? Why, at the time of the WWW, of Facebook and Twitter, is someone so lonely that he needs to connect with Taormina, at the end of the XIXth century and with my Arcadian and imaginary world... ?

Indeed, in our XXIst century, we have access to plenty of gay websites... Nudity, male frontal nudity are no more taboos... You just type "nude man" and Google will show you thousands of pics... So boring, so meaningless... Pornography is just here and now, there is no after, no before... no beside, no behind...

I am not interested in pornography... Too close, too poor, too obvious, too physiologic... I am looking for something else than a trigger to a "petite mort"... I am looking for what is lasting, for what creates dream and images, desires and longings...

Your photographic art makes me dream, today, in this early XXIth century, about what love and desire mean...

I am so much in love... With him, or him... Or with this another one... or just this one...

Your photographs, my dear Wilhelm, allow us to be together... We are together on the slopes of the Aetna, on the cliffs of Taormina... We are together on the edge between XIXth and XXth century...

I dream about your Taormina young men... I felt in love with a few (well mainly one) of them... I feel I know him so well... I feel him, I listen to his voice, I can almost caress him, although he is just dust in the Taormina cemetery...

Love and desire, however, are not concerned with such borders, death and life... I love him, because I feel he would have perhaps loved me... and I feel I have so much to share with him that he would perhaps have shared so much with me...

What is love, what is desire... ? What is a vintage desire, a desire for young men who are no more ?

Your photographs, dear Wilhelm, are questions... I should try to find the answers within myself...

Yours, as always...

Butterfly"

Anthologia Palatina

Wilhelm von Gloeden. Italien Aufnahmen

Published as a postcard by Adolph Engel, Berlin, 1905

(my collection)

"Do not hide your love, Philocrates. The god himself

Is able to trample on my heart.

But give me joy by giving me kisses. A time will come

When you too will ask for these favors from others"

(Strato, Anthologia Palatina, XII, 16)

"If you boast of your beauty, know that the rose also blooms,

But suddenly withers and is thrown out with the refuse.

For flower and beauty are of equal duration.

Envious time causes them to wither together"

(Strato, Anthologia Palatina, XII, 234)

"Perhaps someone in the future, on hearing these my trifles,

Will think that all this suffering in love was my own.

But I inscribe letters for many other boy-lovers,

Since this gift some god granted to me"

(Strato, Anthologia Palatina, XII, 258)

Translations from: Thomas K. Hubbard

Homosexuality in Greece and Rome.

A Textbook of Basic Documents

University of California Press

Berkeley - Los Angeles, 2003

Greek Tragedy

In the background, there are just rocks and stones, the most inhuman background for a fully human tragedy...

On the ground, there is just sand, nothing else, just sand, flying through human fingers as the time flies away... Sand is the only possible ground for a human tragedy...

As in all Greek tragedies, there is anger and madness, there is love and hate, there is tenderness and despair, there is the will to kill, the desire to caress, there is an older one, a younger one...

Fear in your eyes, fear and a prayer in your eyes, and a promiss, an oath, never more, for eternity, I will be yours, I will be your loved one, I never betrayed, never...

But he does not believe him, he want to kill him, he is ready, he want to kill him, such a betrayal, he loved him so much, they were so close, they were brothers in love, they shared so much, warmth and breathe....

No, not now, my brother, my lover, don't kill me now... I love you so much, we shared so much, warmth and breathe... Don't forget our love, what we shared, the warmth of my body, my youth, my love... No, no, my brother, my lover, don't kill me now, I will be yours for ever... I want a kiss from you, not a blow...

I can hear Wilhelm von Gloeden's instructions to his favorite models... I can hear his voice, while he is carefully creating the stage set-up of this photograph... These two Taormina lads forgot they were shepherds, young peasants, fishermen... They forgot their time, the last years of the XIXth century...

They became heroes from a remote past, Greek heroes, playing the intemporal game of love and hate, of life and death.

I have never seen this von Gloeden's photograph in any of the modern books devoted to his art... I have not seen it in the web databases...

So it seems this photograph is pretty rare... It was probably in some private collection, and it was saved from the destruction of von Gloeden's photographic plates, during the fascist rule in Italy.

This beautiful and expressive photograph is now in my collection.

I love it very much...

While I look at it, I can hear the voices, the music of a very old, of a very in temporal Greek tragedy...

Imago lucis opera expressa

"La photo est littéralement une émanation du référent. D'un corps réel, qui était là, sont parties des radiations qui viennent me toucher, moi qui suis ici; peu importe la durée de la transmission; la photo de l'être disparu vient me toucher comme les rayons différés d'une étoile. Une sorte de lien ombilical relie le corps de la chose photographiée à mon regard: la lumière, quoi qu'impalpable, est bien ici un milieu charnel, une peau que je partage avec celui ou celle qui a été photographié.

Il paraît qu'en latin "photographie" se dirait: "imago lucis opera expressa"; c'est-à-dire : image révélée, "sortie", "montée", "exprimée" (comme le jus d'un citron) par l'action de la lumière. Et si la Photographie appartenait à un monde qui ait encore quelque sensibilité au mythe, on ne manquerait pas d'exulter devant la richesse du symbole: le corps aimé est immortalisé par la médiation d'un métal précieux, l'argent (monument et luxe); à quoi on ajouterait l'idée que ce métal, comme tous les métaux de l'Alchimie, est vivant".

Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire. Note sur la Photographie, Paris, Cahiers du Cinéma, Gallimard, Seuil, 1980, p. 126-127.

Alone

"Where art thou, friend ? — Day after day,

Youth like a river flows away;

And forth we fare to meet decay: —

                                          Where are thou ?

Where art thou, friend ? — Beneath the sun

Man hath one life, but only done;

And Life to Death doth hourly run: —

                                          Where are thou ?

Where art thou, friend ? — Must our own will

Combine with chance and change to chill

The hearts that once were won't to thrill? —

                                          Where are thou ?

Where art thou, friend ? — Stretch forth thine hand

Across the waste to where I stand;

Let love not fade like fires unfanned: —

                                          Where are thou ?

Where art thou, friend ? — Can love secure

In gloom and solitude endure ?

Oblivion's wound what skill can cure ? —

                                          Where are thou ?

Where art thou, friend ? — In vain I wail.

Let me not spread my spirit's sail

Alone, to drift before the gale! 

                                          Where are thou ?"

John Addington Symonds (1840-1893)

Lad's Love

An Anthology of Uranian Poetry and Prose

Edited with an introduction by Michael Matthew Kaylor

Kansas City, Valancourt Books, 2010, vol. 2, p. 365.

Une pensée qui passe...

(Collection privée)

Peut-on photographier une pensée qui passe, un état d'âme, un instant d'absence, une seconde d'éternité ?

Qu'est-ce qui se joue dans ce moment fugitif figé pour toujours ?

Il y a quelque chose de sublime dans cette image de von Gloeden, qui fait de ce portrait d'adolescent comme l'emblème de la photographie...

Le temps de la pose, de la pause, figé pour l'éternité.

Un regard qui se détourne du photographe, du spectateur pour plonger à l'intérieur de soi, au coeur d'une âme.

Ce garçon me semble être le même que celui qui incarnait les rêves orientaux de von Gloeden, Ahmed, Asrah, le garçon des sables et des oasis.

Rêves Siciliens: La mélancolie d'Ahmed - Asrah / The Melancholy of Ahmed - Asrah

Je retrouve dans ce portrait le même regard, la même mélancolie, la même gravité, trop profonde pour un visage si jeune.

Cette photographie invite à une méditation sans fin, à aller loin au coeur de sa mémoire et son imaginaire.

Cette photographie a la mélancolie d'un Nocturne de Chopin, la beauté de la sonate de Vinteuil...

J'aime le trait de plume de Gloeden qui a souligné le contour des yeux, là où tout se joue, à la jonction du regard et de l'âme.

Cette photographie est une invitation au rêve.

Pourquoi es-tu si sérieux, si mélancolique, si grave, jeune garçon de Taormina, au seuil du XXe siècle ?

About dream and desire...

"Dear Wilhelm,

Sorry to be back to you after such a long time... I was traveling abroad, so far away from Taormina... But I brought with me the sun of Sicily, the light of the San Domenico piazza, and the beauty of your models...

How could I forget them... They make me dream so much... I see them, I talk to them so much in my dreams... Your photographic eye made them so perfect, so relevant, so splendid, so desirable... Desire is such a strange thing... How could we desire a boy pictured on a photograph... ? The aura is more important than the body, the gaze is more important than touch, a photograph haunts his viewer longer than a body haunts its lover... At least, I think, I hope so...

I will never be tired to love your photographs, to love your models... You caught their youth, their beauty, what makes them so desirable, so lovable... Looking at your photographs is just reading a love story, a never ending love story, and day after day, I will say "I love you" to the boy you chose to focus on...

Am I loving a boy or a photograph ? I am loving beauty, intemporal beauty, hauting eyes, half open lips, waiting for a kiss, or about to say some loving words...

I am loving a boy from Athens or Sparta, from Alexandria or Rome, a blossoming boy at the peak of youth and beauty, just a flower that will last as far as youth does...

How to forget him, how to forget you... Each of your photograph is the first chapter of a love story, and the viewer should write its ending part... 

Loving a photograph is loving a boy for ever... Looking carefully at the photograph, I can feel the breathe, the warmth of your model, I can almost touch him and embrass him.... "Almost" is  what makes the difference... "Almost" is what will never put an end to my longing, to my love, to my desire, "almost" is what will allow the magic of your photograph to go on and on, for ever, for the fortunate viewer who will perhaps get it, after I disappeared...

Dear Wilhem, thanks so much for experimenting such a new way to write love poetry...

Yours, as always, Philip"

Von Gloeden Archive, Letter from Philip to W. von Gloeden, ca. 1912, call number 1912/00/05