Taormina: Wilhelm Von Gloeden

Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden began photographing the male nude in the early 1890s in Taormina, a hillside town on the northeast coast of Sicily. Following his death in 1931, yon Gloeden's collection of over three thousand glass plate negatives was left to his longtime friend and model, Pancrazio Bucini. When Mussolini's fascists entered Taormina in 1936, the negatives were seized and Bucini was accused of "keeping pornography." Though Bucini was acquitted, the negatives were not returned until after World War II -- few of the plates survived. This reissue of Taormina captures the beauty and eroticism of von Gloeden's finest images in large-format four-color plates.Roland Barthes is the author of 'Taormina: Wilhelm Von Gloeden', published 1998 under ISBN 9780942642438 and ISBN 0942642430.