Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856–1931). Active primarily in Taormina, Sicily. His work depicts local male youths in classical and pastoral compositions informed by Greco-Roman imagery and contemporary ethnographic practice. These images occupy a contested position in photographic history, situated between archaeology, aesthetic idealization, and the colonial gaze.
The images are presented here as archival material, without interpretive or moral resolution.
Digital colorization is used as a reconstructive process to reintroduce material presence and temporal ambiguity, not as historical correction or aesthetic completion.
