Birth: September 16, 1856; Death: February 16, 1931. Suffering from frail health in his early years, von Gloeden relocated to Taormina, Sicily, where his sister eventually joined him. From Taormina, he traversed Italy, visiting his cousin Wilhelm von Pluscrow, a commercial photographer based in Naples, who imparted his photographic knowledge. Due to financial struggles and the gift of a camera, von Gloeden embarked on his early photography career, selling postcards of Sicilian landscapes and monuments and capturing portraits of the local denizens. The villagers’ acceptance of von Gloeden’s open homosexuality was bolstered by his generosity and the royalties he bestowed upon his models, resulting in some of his images selling by the thousands. Following von Gloeden’s passing in 1931, the Italian authorities deemed his work as lurid and proceeded to obliterate an approximate three thousand glass plate negatives and prints. By the end of the Second World War, only a meager few hundred images remained.
www.ftn-books.com has some nice von Gloeden titles now available.
