Young men in antique costume in front of a ruin in Sicily c. 1895 - 1925

Wilhelm von Gloeden made this photograph of young men in antique costume in front of a ruin in Sicily sometime between 1856 and 1931. This image feels like a constructed theater set: Roman youths posing in a courtyard. The photograph's sepia tones render the water fountain, elaborate mosaics, and even the figures as if made of stone. I am thinking about the performance of identity. About how von Gloeden, an outsider, constructed an idea of Sicily that perhaps wasn’t authentic. He might have thought of himself as a painter, constructing an image in the darkroom instead of with a brush. What stories were these young men telling each other, and themselves, in these moments of performance? It reminds me of the way painters rework the same idea in their work, posing the same questions about themselves over and over again.