Giovanni Crupi

Taormina vista dall'Hotel Timeo

Giovanni Crupi was originally an amateur photographer. He transformed it into a profession in 1885.

He was a friend and colleague of Wilhelm von Gloeden.[1] Pasquale Verdicchio in his book Looters, Photographers, and Thieves: Aspects of Italian Photographic Culture in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries states that von Gloeden learned basics of photography from Crupi. Von Gloeden himself stated in 1898 in an autobiographical script that he also learned the rudiments of photographic art from the Giuseppe Bruno.[2] It cannot be denied, however, that in the landscape production some point of contact between the two friends and colleagues is found, in both directions. In the same way, it will be the influence of Gloeden that a small number of male nudes produced by Crupi, set in archaeological sites in Syracuse, will be attributed.

The confusion between the two photographers is supported by a small number of images that carry both the Gloeden and Crupi timbre. However, these images are stylistically quite different from what Crupi has produced, so it is possible that the double timbre is due to the fact that Crupi acted as Gloeden's distributor: they are in fact known photos by Gloeden that show the second stamp of Brogi or Angelo Pedo, who we know with certainty to have been distributors for third parties. The artistic photos of Crupi are however easily distinguished, usually, due to the presence of a thick black band at the bottom, in which is written the title of the image and the catalog number, as was customary in the commercial photo of the era, in addition to the signature of Crupi.

Crupi in 1899 he expatriated and opened a photographic studio in Egypt near Cairo, in Heliopolis.

The studio of Crupi in via Teatro Greco in Taormina did not close. It was taken over by his brother-in-law, Francesco Galifi (Taormina 1865-1951), who specialised in Sicilian landscapes, not only for making his own photographs, but also printing out negatives from the Crupi archive, including works by von Gloeden. These images, often extremely large in format, were sometimes printed using the outdated salted paper technique which had been popular in the period before 1860. Working with various publishing houses, many of these photographs appeared as illustrations in books and magazines. The Galifi-Crupi studio opened its main branch under the clock-tower in piazza S. Agostino, and Giovanni Crupi rejoined the enterprise on his return from Egypt in 1910 (though he no longer took photographs).

• Mirisola, Vincenzo, and Vanzella, Giuseppe (edited by), Sicily mythical Arcadia. Von Gloeden and the "School" of Taormina, Edizioni people of photography, Palermo 2004, pp. 21–25.
• Pohlmann, Ulrich, Wilhelm von Gloeden - Sehnsucht nach Arkadien, Nishen, Berlin 1987.

Works of Giovanni Crupi are in several public and private collections, including Royal Academy of Arts, Getty Museum [3][4]