NEW BLOG TO CHECK OUT: Sensual, provocative,young-male themed literature from an Indie author.  http://nicholasshapiroauthor.blogspot.com/

 

 

Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856 – 1931) was a photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his nude studies of Sicilian boys, which usually featured props 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.

The Genesis Children is a quirky art-house film from the early seventies, without much of a plot, mainly involving young teenage boys wandering and swimming naked in an isolated cove overlooking a calm sea. Lost for decades, the film is beginning to re-emerge as a kind of classic.

Here's a link to watch it online; http://www.novamov.com/video/4bc38d16accbf

The Genesis Children

 

There is an arrangement of the hair - abundant, long-fringed, swept distinctively forward, that really enhances boyish beauty.

The Folding Star, by Alan Hollinghurst, follows Edward Manners, in his early thirties, as he escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with the seventeen-year-old Luc Altidore. It is an extraordinary book which takes the reader into a world of obsession and mystery.

 

A must-read contemporary classic, very cheap, on Amazon, for the kindle. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Corpus-Christi-Carroll-ebook/dp/B005X0MSFM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336216998&sr=1-1

Product Description

Liam Whittier, the junior house-master at a boys' boarding school, is able to drift through life, feckless and disaffected, until the arrival of a new boarder, the fourteen-year-old Corpus Christi Carroll. Almost at once he falls in love; aesthetically obsessed, seeking to possess the new boy, who has arrived with secrets of his own. The plot is interspersed with flashbacks to Whittier's earlier life. In these sections, the depiction of a close-knit, modest family adds a naturalness that opens up the novel and leads gradually to the culmination of the plot in the present.
Corpus Christi Carroll is a literary work, evoking, in theme and style, Nabokov's Lolita, and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Louche, melancholy, though with a quizzical, modern eye for the absurd, the novel follows the narrator as he reels between lyric idealism and sated regret, dizzy desire and the dingy truth. With modern cultural relevance, Corpus Christi Carroll is a universal tale of obsession, love and death, fashioned from a particular life.

Almost inadvertantly beautiful images arise out of mirror shots; photos taken into mirrors by young subjects wanting to post pictures of themselves; the attraction is in the basic instinct of display behind the shyness or the clowning around. Oftentimes, the composition is ideal, despite the spontaneity and amateur swiftness.

The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst, (author of The Folding Star) is a darkly erotic work, about a young aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity. The novel is a kind of Proustian panorama of young gay life, and is told with Hollinghurst's usual intelligent, high-literary style. The sex scenes, particularly with Beckwith's teenage boy lovers, are graphic at times.
http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Pool-Library-Alan-Hollinghurst/dp/0679722564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320971201&sr=1-1

 

Arthur Rimbaud was a young, bi-sexual French poet, who achieved his poetical heights as a teenager, writing nothing further after the age of twenty. Here he is, in youth, in one of only two known photos from that time.

Here he is again, given a stylish postmodern makeover.

Eros, in Greek mythology, was the Greek god of love. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire"). Modern culture has Cupid as an impish, chubby-limbed, harmless icon; but the real Cupid was disobedient, carnal and reckless. here are some nice, though more sensual images in art:

The old and the new: an old sculpture of Eros, and a modern photograph - with eerie, and touching similarities:

The old and the new, again; this time a depiction of Eros in a classical painting, followed by a modern adaptation:

Henry Scott Tuke was an English painter, notable for his depictions of seaside idylls featuring teenage boys. This epitomises his style; evocative of sea breezes, warmth; sensual and charming.

Tuke again, with an ancient world, arcadia approach to sunbathing. He's pretty blatant and whimsical; you expect nymphs and minor deities to drift through the painting; but the depiction of physique is charming, despite the sedulously placed grass.

 

Carravaggio was also prolific in his depiction of boys, involving them in mythical, biblical and allegorical scenes. Here is, I think, his best work, the myth of the boyflower, Narcissus, entranced by the beauty of his reflection.

A work by Frederich Leighton, ( A confirmed 'bachelor') entitled: 'Paulo.'

This is Bjorn Andresen, amazing from almost every angle, in Visconti's film Death in Venice, about a dissafected artist who becomes infatuated with a youth, named Tadzio, whilst holidaying in Venice.

 

This is Wladyslaw Moes, a young Polish boy, the actual, historical Tadzio, who the author of the novel Death in Venice, Thomas Mann, became infatuated with whilst holidaying, around the turn of the twentieth century.



Skater boys have a particular appeal, because the slides, kick-flips, etc, are constantly turning and tautening the physique into interesting poses. Often shirtless, with low slung shorts showing the band of underwear, the toned body from the exercise, all make for aesthetically good imagery. Here is a shot that is more idle, and highlights the curvature, the dip and swell of the lower back and buttocks, with a faint wavy pattern of ribs.

A feature on colouring; the vivid tones and hues of the eyes, lips and hair, in some stand-out images.

Here is a selection of images portraying androgynous boys

Outside the realm of chic, high art photography, boys can be at their most attractive in the most conventional of settings: the irony and pathos of the simple suburban bedroom; bored, idle, constantly feeling the urge.

Sensual images of boys, lost in thought, quality photography in beautiful light