| The Beauty of Innocence |
Wilhelm von Gloeden - Guglielmo Plüschow - Vincenzo Galdi Paradis Sicilien. Paysages, Portraits, Nus 1890-1905 Edition limited to 1000 numbered copies. (pp 96), large format, paper, € 42,50 |
| Paradis Sicilien contains a selection of photographs
by three photographers who captured the beauty of Italian male youths in
the 1890s and the early decades of the twentieth century. |
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931) is a legendary figure who has
become an integral part of the history of male nude photography. He studied
Art History at Rostock in 1876-’77 and subsequently trained as a painter.
Suffering from a lung condition, he met by chance the painter Otto Geleng
who spoke to him of Sicily. Geleng had already been living in Taormina for
several years. Gloeden decided to go there around 1878 and discovered his
paradise. The people were poor but beautiful. He became close to the local
photographers Giovanni Crupi and Giuseppe Bruno, who discussed their work
with him and the Baron was amazed. Seeing the landscapes and the local youths
in their natural state, he started imagining them through the eye of the
camera, coloured by his fascination with classical antiquity. He learned
the art of photography from Bruno and then went to Naples to visit his cousin
Guglielmo Plüschow who was working there at the time as a professional
photographer. With Plüschow he worked on improving his technique. |
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| His first photographs date back to the early 1880s:
landscapes, portraits, genre scenes. Around 1890 he started photographing
unclad youths in natural settings around Taormina and in his garden. He took
care with them, covering their bodies with a perfumed oil mixture of his
own making to give their skin a velvety appearance. Many clients from abroad
came to his studio and bought prints from him. After the otbreak of the Great
War in 1914 the Baron went back to Germany. His friend and assistant, Pancrazio
Bucini (“Il Moro”) looked after his house and garden for him. When Gloeden
returned at the end of the war he continued making photographs. |
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| The present catalogue enables you to see new nudes
(and a few fine landscapes) and thus have a better idea of Baron von Gloeden’s
oeuvre. Gloeden’s cousin Wilhelm Plüschow (who later Italianized his first name to Guglielmo), was born on 18th August 1852 in Prussia. He arrived in Italy around 1870 and was registered there as a wine merchant. He started his career as a photographer around 1875 in Naples, later moving to Rome. Plüschow met youths in Naples and Rome and invited them to his studio. These young Italians had no problem shedding their clothes, being proud of their bodies and pleased to show them off. |
Plüschow’s photographs are often composed, sophisticated, but seem
more direct than those of his cousin, in looks, lasciviousness and sometimes
in provocation. He liked to photograph young men in archeological settings
like Pompeii, or the Temple of Dionysus in Athens, showing the Greek Ideal.
Around 1900 he left for Egypt and brought back fine works for the tourist
trade (like those of the Pyramids), but also nudes of boys and of girls.
Such prints are rarer than those of his Italian period. Many of his works
were reproduced over several years in the German magazine Die Schönheit
in the early 1900s. His oeuvre includes many nudes and some fine portraits.
There are occasionally some quite poetic works like the two embracing youths
where the face of one has a distant look, with a mixture of symbolism and
religiousness. After 1910 Plüschow returned to Germany. Nothing is known
of his life from 1910 to 1930. He passed away in Berlin on 3rd January 1930. |
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Plüschow’s and Von Gloeden’s contemporary Vincenzo Galdi is a
photographer whose life is shrouded in mystery. Like Plüschow, with
whom he started his career, he produced as many photographs of women as of
men, but only the latter are reproduced in Paradis Sicilien. As far as young
men are concerned, his photographs are generally more explicitly sexual.
His photos in Rome at the end of the nineteenth century mostly show young
men draped over rugs, over-laden interiors, statues, and props of all kinds.
There are sometimes much more erotic images, such as a photograph showing
self-fellatio, which is fairly well known. He is considered to have had an
Algerian period (1900-1902), where the photographic print paper he used is
not the same. He must have marketed his photographs privately, satisfying
orders from contemporary collectors of erotic art. There are no indications
either as to the beginning or as to the end of his life. |
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| [Text adapted from the introduction.] |