Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden

Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856, 1931) was a German-born photographer who settled in Taormina, Sicily, where he became renowned for his idealized, classically-inspired photographs of Sicilian youths posed in pastoral and Arcadian settings. His work drew heavily on ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics, blending Pictorialist photography with homoerotic and neoclassical sensibilities. Von Gloeden's images gained wide circulation in Europe and America during his lifetime and are now recognized as significant contributions to the history of photography and the study of sexuality and aesthetics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.