WILHELM VON GLOEDEN

Sinopsis del producto

Taken between 1878 and 1914 in the Sicilian town of Taormina, Wilhelm von Gloeden´s photographs are pictures of yearning for a mythical land of ecstatic joy. His landscapes, genre photographs, portraits, and especially hisnudes conjure up images of a Mediterranean paradise, far removed from the troubles and constraints of the mechanized civilization and Prussian prudery that the wealthy German aristocrat had left behind. Situated on Sicilys steep coastline facing the Ionian Sea, he found in Taormina a virgin landscape that seemed unchanged since antiquity, and initially he stylized the daily lives of the inhabitants as an idyllic existence. Gloeden gained the confidence of the townspeople and composed «living pictures» primarily with boys and young men. Based on classical motifs or works of the Baroque painter Caravaggio, with bacchanalian or romantically superelevated religious content, these photographs were and remain sought-after collector´s items. Sensuous expressions of masculine homoerotic culture, they established Gloeden´s stature in the history of photography. Wilhelm von Gloeden´s villa in Taormina became a much-frequented meeting place for famous personages of the fin-de-siècle. Writers such as Oscar Wilde and Anatole France, aristocrats such as King Edward VII and Crown PrinceAugust of Prussia, as well as captains of industry, like theKrupps and the Vanderbilts, signed their names in his guest book, some of them repeatedly. Ulrich Pohlmann is the head of the Fotomuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum in Munich. His introductory essay describes the exotic and innovative aspects of Wilhelm von Gloeden´s photographs against the backdrop of his epoch.

9783888144066

TAORMINA

POHLMANN, ULRICH