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.

Lord Biron, Soungouroff et autres...

La Galerie parisienne Au Bonheur du Jour propose du 4 avril au 26 mai 2012 une exposition-vente sur le thème "Nus masculins asiatique" avec des photographies de Biron.

The Parisian Art Gallery Au Bonheur du Jour has a new exhibition from april 4th to may 26th about "Male Asian nudes", with photographs by Biron.

Biron. Jefferson Chen

Vous trouverez également une sélection de tableaux et de dessins de Soungouroff, Gaston Goor, Michel Gourlier, A. Aumaître, Czanara, Andrien Icardo, Emile Aubry, André Ragot, Roland Caillaud.

You will find also a unique selection of paintings and drawings by artists such as Soungouroff, Gaston Goor, Michel Gourlier, A. Aumaître, Czanara, Andrien Icardo, Emile Aubry, André Ragot, Roland Caillaud.

Soungouroff (1911-1982). Jeune homme au panier de fruits (1955)

Soungouroff (1911-1982). Le pécheur (1951)

Soungouroff (1911-1982). Saint Sébastien (1947)

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 ?

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