German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden was BOTD in 1856. Born in Wismar in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin to a middle-class family, he studied painting at the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School, abandoning his studies to take a rest cure for tuberculosis. Sent to Italy to improve his health in a warmer climate, he visited Naples and Capri before settling in Taormina in Sicily. He began taking nude photographs of teenaged Sicilian boys, typically posed to suggest Classical Greek and Roman art. His work was notable for his use of photographic filters, special body make-up to disguise skin blemishes on his young models, and the frank homoeroticism of his images. His photographs were later exhibited in galleries in Britain, Europe and North America, earning him international fame, and creating a highly profitable industry selling prints to collectors around the world. The popularity of the photographs transformed Taormina into a tourist attraction, especially for gay men escaping restrictive sex laws in their own countries. Von Gloeden received visits from a number of celebrity homosexuals, including industrialist Friedrich Krupp, Crown Prince Wilhelm (later Kaiser Wilhelm II) and Oscar Wilde. Unsurprisingly, he slept with many of his models, and had a long-term relationship with Pancrazio Buciunì, who first came to work for him aged 14. Gloeden died in 1931, aged 74, leaving his archive of 30,000 photographs to Buciunì. In 1939, Buciunì was charged with distributing pornography after attempting to sell some of the archive, but was acquitted at trial. Von Gloeden’s work remains controversial, both admired for its artistic merits and critiqued for exploiting his young subjects and legitimising pedophilia.