Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856–1931) was a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boys and young men, which usually featured props such as wreaths or amphoras suggesting a setting in the Greece or Italy of antiquity. From a modern standpoint, his work is commendable due to his controlled use of lighting as well as the often elegant poses of his models. His innovations include the use of photographic filters and special body makeup (a mixture of milk, olive oil, and glycerin) to disguise skin blemishes.
Gloeden generally made several different kinds of photographs. The ones that garnered the most widespread attention in Europe and overseas were usually relatively chaste studies of peasants, shepherds, fisherman, etc., featured in clothing like togas or Sicilian traditional costume, and which generally downplayed their homoerotic implications. He also photographed landscapes and some studies were of, or included, women. . . . More explicit photos in which boys aged between about ten and twenty, and occasionally older men, were nude (sometimes with prominent genitalia) and which, because of eye contact or physical contact were more sexually suggestive, were traded "under the counter" and among close friends of the photographer, but according to Dr. Ulrich Pohlmann, head of the photographic archive at the Munich City Museum, "as far as is known, Gloeden's archive contained neither pornographic nor erotically lascivious motifs."
See also the previous posts:
• The Art of Richard Haines
• The Art of John MacConnell
• The Art of Leo Rydell Jost
• The Art of Jim Ferringer
• The Art of Juliusz Lewandowski
• The Art of Felix d'Eon
• The Art of Herbert List
• The Art of Joe Ziolkowski
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