| A Beautiful von Gloeden
Collection |
Italo Zannier (Ed.) Wilhelm von Gloeden – Fotografie: Nudi, Paesaggi e Scene di Genere (pp 192), deluxe paperback, large format, 49,95 |
At the end of the 19th century a group of photographers,
so exceptional as to form a singular elite coterie, were at work in eastern
Sicily, between Messina and Siracusa.
Capuana, “professor of photography” was the president and there were at
least two members, De Roberto and Giovanni Verga, all passionately devoted
to taking photographs along the Alcantara River and the photogenic, sun-filled
countryside, apt subjects for ‘verist’ portraits of rocks, olive trees and
peasants. Another member might have been the handsome young German Wilhelm
von Gloeden, resident photographer of Taormina, his gaze fixed on smoking
Etna, seen as Olympus, surrounded by the dramatic images of the myths of Arcadia,
with naked boys backstage from dawn to dusk. Adorned and perhaps amused,
they were ready and willing to take part in the scenic rite contrived by
the exotic and genial Wilhelm, stage director of an archaeological dream suggested
by his his nostalgic photographs. |
|
The young Wilhelm von Gloeden (barely twenty-two) arrived in Taormina in
1878 after pausing in Naples. He immediately became involved in photography,
apparently also for economic reasons, but above all because this new medium
fascinated him (his prophetic stepfather had given him a camera!). He had
a “tourist” desire to capture in images the mythical landscape he saw from
the terrace of the house, first towards Vesuvius and then towards Etna; the
volcanoes on one side and the sea on the other as well as the Sun of the South,
which photography insisted on. In the beginning his preferred, and almost
most obvious, subjects were panoramas and street scenes, as well as the
local professions, taken primarily as “souvernir” documents. Von Gloeden’s
reputation, however, rests on his more daring work, that of the nudes. Wilhelm
von Gloeden seems to have passionately practiced two activities at the same
time: one was public, with landscapes and folkloristic scenes, the other apparently
clandestine as an amateur photographer and a proclaimed homosexual. |
|
For a long time these nudes were considered
on the verge of pornography. However when looked at without conventional prejudices
(it was Peyrefitte more than any other who
was responsible for interpreting them in that way!) the photographs reveal,
with a few exceptions, a delicate chasteness, even naïveté,
an ironic, ingenuous but enthralling poetry, in a romantic attempt at a visual
reconstruction of history. 
In any case the youths of Taormina and surroundings seem to have been chosen
with the attention of a scholar of antiquity, with an approximate reference
to the myths of Magna Graecia. They were all beautifully in keeping with
Winckelmann’s ideal, and vivacious, willing to play-act, even for a small
tip, but above all for the inevitable narcissism we are all subject to when
in front of a camera, posing with a smile. There is a friendly complacence
in the expressions of these tanned boys, with their splendid black eyes
and thick eybrows, typical models, not so much as Sicilians, but as the
surviving children of the ancient Gods, obviously descended from the scenic
slopes of Etna, or risen from the waves of the sea of Naxos. Text in Italian
and English. 150 photographs. [Excerpted from the introduction by Italo Zannier.] |
|