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 ?

Fersen. Le baiser de Narcisse

Après la réédition remarquée de Lord Lyllian. Messes noires (1905) par Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen, les éditions QuestionDeGenre/GKC inaugurent l'année  2012 en rééditant, du même auteur, Le Baiser de Narcisse dans sa version illustrée par Brisset (1912).

On se souvient que Fersen est le fondateur de la première revue homosexuelle française (Akademos, 1909).

Ce cahier de 80 pages est disponible dès maintenant à la librairie “Les Mots à la Bouche”, 6 rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie à Paris (75004) au prix de 14 €

ou par commande franco de port = chèque de 14 euros libellé à GKC à adresser à Patrick Cardon c/o Faria, 37 rue Gabrielle94220 Charenton-le-Pont

 

 

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

Stage set up

"Dear Philip,

You asked me to share with you some of my little secrets, how I create the stage set up for my neo-Arcadian photographs...

I think about the stage set up as a painter. Every detail has its own importance. Foreground or background, various objects and props should contribute to build up the imaginary world where I want my Taormina boys to be displayed...

First, I am thinking about the floor: my old zebra skin suggests a world of luxury and sensuality, an exotic horizon, where Africa meets Sicily.

Then, I choose some of my favorite singing birds, sometimes some cicadas, and I put them into a small wicker cage. They will create the musical background of my photograph, a drone or a melody that will help the boys to focus and to relax...

Details matter so much... I love to use some of the Greek vases Taormina's peasants sometimes find in a forgotten tumb... A lekythos has such a perfect shape, it was devoted to the dead, and somehow, I think a lekythos is relevant in my photographic art, since I try to dig into cultural memory while making my models immortal...

Taormina's potters still remember the skill of their ancestors and a modern eartheware jar evokes a remote Antiquity where water, vine and oil where kept in such a way...

My house, Piazza San Domenico, and the surrounding buildings are timeless and suggest what the urban landscape of antique Tauromenium could be...

Then, I speak gently to my models, and I try to suggest a mood, a story, a legend. I want them to forget my camera, and to be the intemporal young men that adorned so many Greek temples... Pasqualino is my favorite model, he loves so much to play the part of a Theocritus shepherd, he loves so much to be loved and to inspire tenderness and desire... Who could fight against his gaze, again his grace ?   

Pietro has such a natural grace, who could ever guess that a Taormina's young fisherman remembers so well the grace and curves, the sensuality and boldness, the pride and tenderness of ancient Greek ephebes, who inspired so many dreams of beauty, so many desires and memories...

I am a perfectionist, and every detail matters for me... I spend so much times finding the right light, the perfect stage set up... Sometimes, I miss something... Sometimes a flower may hide another one... Actually, I love this visual lapsus... My Taormina boys do not belong to Arcadia, they live here and now, they love and they are loved, they are not concepts, they are real guys, and the most ethereal desire should not make us forget that there is no soul without a body, and that boys could be loved by men for who they are, sensual worlds to dream about and to caress with the eyes, lovable boys to be loved for their soul as well as for their body...

Each of my photographs is a love story... A love story between my Taormina models, between them and me... A love story between my photograph and the viewer...

Each of my photographs is the archive of a moment that vanished, of light and shade, of a birds song, of a splendid beauty...

In my craziest dreams, dear Philip, I hope my photographs will survive me and that in the future, someone will understand them and love them as well as you do...

With my warmest regards,

Wilhelm"

(Private collection)

Von Gloeden's letter to Philip, around 1902, Von Gloeden Archive, Call number ca 1902/00/04.

Boy or girl... ? Desire and imagination

A boy or a girl ? A boy with a whig and with a girlish veil and dress ?
Yes, most likely, a boy...

I love so much this photograph... I love the sweet face, I love the dreaming eyes, we will never know what he was looking at...

I love the intemporal poetry of this photograph, the beauty of this face is shining for ever, these eyes will haunt me for ever...

Wilhelm von Gloeden's camera caught for ever the fugitive time of a dream, of a memory, of a thought...

This boy of Taormina is looking at eternity...

I don't know your name... Perhaps in Taormina someone still remember it...?

Were you a friend of Pasqualino ?

You make me dream and I would love so much, so much to tell you, so many things...

I know you would listen to me, you would understand me and even smile, and again, you would turn your gaze towards this so remote horizon, back to an immemorial past or to a future beyond your imagination...

Yes, in 2011, there is still someone who is moved by your beauty, by your youth, by the mystery, the riddle of your gaze, so focussed, so deep, so silent...

You are now a part of my small collection of von Gloeden's masterworks... I choose only photographs that inspire me, photographs that are a music for my eyes, for my heart, for my thought...

Perhaps I am wrong, but I think I already crossed your path, a while ago, I was already seduced by your beauty, by your mystery, by your ambiguity. Boy or girl ? Pure beauty ignores borders... Any collection is ruled by its inner logic, by the gaze and the sensitivity of the collector...

Are you the same boy as this one, I posted on my blog on January 29, in 2010 ???

Yes, I think so...

I love this photograph, and, may I tell it frankly, I love you too, so much...

The Old Story

Von Gloeden, Portrait of a Young Boy, c. 1899.

"You loved me, sweet, and I loved you,

Each of us deemed the other true —

What was it fell between us two ?

Your mouth a crimson flower to me,

Your eyes an  unsung melody

Woven to which I fain would be.

Each unto each we were complete,

No sound unto my ears was sweet

As the soft echo of your feet.

Was it because we loved too well,

We tired and broke the fervid spell ?

Wearied of heaven, longed for hell?

I know not, and I do not fret,

Because I hear that you forget

Even that we have ever met.

Yes, I remember without pain,

Ou joy in sunshine and in rain,

And only sigh to love again."

Standley Addleshaw (aka. Alan Stanley)

in: Michael Matthew Kailor (ed.)

Lad's Love. An Anthology of Uranian Poetry and Prose

Volume 1, Kansas City, Valancourt Books, 2010, p. 9.

Dreaming about...

"You are so beautiful, the both of you, Taormina's lads,

You are pure youth and beauty, you are a caress for my eyes,

You are a song, a dream, a sorrow and a memory,

You are so close, so far away, 

Here and now, such a  long time ago and so far away...

How could I reach you, through the mirror of photography

You are on one side of the photograph,

I am on the other side,

Never, never we will meet... I will look at you for ever... 

I would love so much, so much to love you,

Actually I do, I would love so much to be loved by you...

Or just to be looked at, where I am, who I am, on the other side of the photograph...

So much sun, so much light, I love the curves, the shapes, the teen grace,

I love what is shown as much as what is hidden, 

I love you, Taormina's shepherds, I love the both of you...

I would love so much to hear your voice and your laughs,

I would love so much to feel you, so close, so close,

I just love you through a photograph, on the other side of the mirror...

It was such a warm day, such a summer day, at the peak of a wave,

At the peak of the hot wave... in the Taormina's wilderness...

I would love so much to caress the curves, the curves of the hot wave,

The curves of your bodies, so hot young sheperds from Taormina...

Perhaps we will meet, somewhere, elsewhere...

Perhaps we will meet if I can go through  this photograph,

If I can reach you, on the other side of this print,

If I can reach you, in Taormina's wilderness...

My Pasqualino, what is the name of your friend, so tender, so graceful ?

I love the curves, the grace of your friend, while he looks at you...

I would love to be a Joshua tree, to be a cicada, or just a rock,

A rock in Taormina's wilderness,

I would love to be a sun's beam, to be the breathe of the wind,

And to caress the both of you, so close, so far away,

From somewhere else, from the other side of the photograph"

Anonymous poem, Von Gloeden Archive, Call number ca 1900/anon/17.

Partenza vers la beauté !

Comme l'a remarqué l'un des lecteurs perspicaces de mon blog, la photographie de von Gloeden que j'ai postée sous le titre "Orfeo" (et qui fait partie de ma collection personnelle) a été choisie par Achille Essebac pour la couverture de son beau livre "Partenza... vers la beauté !", racontant son voyage en Italie. Ce livre mythique est à présent dans ma bibliothèque, grâce à la générosité de mon amie Nicole.

As one of the clever readers of my blog stressed it, the von Gloeden photograph I posted in my previous message, "Orfeo" (part of my private collection), was chosen by Achille Essebac for the cover of his beautiful book "Partenza... towards beauty !", an account of his journey across Italy. This mythical book is now in my library, thanks to the generosity of my friend Nicole.