SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE

In Symphonie fantastique, Paluzzi references his own queer body and the rich history of LGBTQIA+ artists—Claude Cahun, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya—who have created self-portraits as a form of self-expression, self-exploration, and self-acceptance. In these four photographs, mirroring the first four acts of Berlioz’s symphony about love, death, and obsession, Paluzzi positions himself between his camera and projections of images by Wilhelm von Gloeden, creating a space between his own mortal body and the idealized ones von Gloeden depicted.

Wilhelm von Gloeden traveled to southern Italy in his early twenties to find reprieve from various health concerns. What he discovered, however, was a desire to explore male sexuality through photography—much of which was destroyed during the war due to its perceived perversity. Von Gloeden’s work stands as one of the earliest examples of queer self-portraiture—an attempt, even then, to merge contemporary bodies with Greek sculptures of ideal human forms. These motifs have remained central to many queer and non-queer photographers throughout the history of photography.