Born in Mecklenburg, Wilhelm von Plüschow settled in Rome as a wine trader around 1872. He moved then to Naples where he started his activity as a photographer. Back to Rome, he had two assistant photographers, Pietro Magnotti ed Enrico Simoncini.
Plüschow started to produce, possibly in Naples, images of naked boys (as well as some girls) and in the 1880s he was the most famous author of this kind of images in Europe.
He also worked commission, shooting nudes of the young italian lovers of gay foreigner turists in Italy, the most famous being Nino Cesarini, the lover of the French baron Jacques d'Adelsward Fersen.
Plüschow also published books of landscapes, portraits, and women nudes. He was a pro, a full time photographer who earned a good income from pictures.
It is only after 1890 that his cousin, Wilhelm von Gloeden, appears on the market of male nude. Allegedly, during his stay at Naples in the years 1876-1878, Plüschow taught photograph to Gloeden, who was then also in Naples.
Gradually Gloeden became more famous than his cousin, so much that often Plüschow works are published and sold as Gloeden's. Some so called critics even asserted that Plüschow never existed, that it was only a Gloeden's pseudonym...
The end of Plüschow work was caused by two scandals. The first occurred in 1902, as an effect of the Krupp's scandal. Plüschow was arrested when a famous German singer was caught in his apartment-studio in a compromising attitude with a young Roman man.
Plüschow and his assistants were charged with "corruption of minors" and sentenced to eight months prison and an heavy penalty.
After his discharge, Plüschow resumed in Rome his work. But a second scandal burst out in 1907. One Alfredo Marinelli charded the photographer with shoting to his 12 year-old son Ernani pornographic pictures.
Plüschow then went back to Germany, in his family estates, but before 1910 he was again at work in Italy, this time devoting himself to landscape pictures. But this new activity was not so profitable, thus after 1910 he went back definitely to Germany. We have no more news about his life, until 1930, the year of his death.
