Bold, opinionated and unequivocally queer, in its trademark terracotta pages, the third issue of The Boy Is Beautiful magazine – Hyacinth – weaves together compelling stories captured through the intimate, homoerotic lenses and brush strokes of fleshing international photographers and artists, including South London photographic duo Studio Prokopiou, Manchester-based artist James Unsworth, Chicago-based photographer Michael Weinberg, intimate storytelling project Tale of Men and many more.

Join us over wine and divine jams as we flip through 112 pages full of Athenian hotties, Greek deities, ceramic threesomes, tender bodies, ancient and modern rubble and sun-kissed “erastes”.

ABOUT THE BOY IS BEAUTIFUL

On the surface of a red-figure Attica vase, some thousands years ago, an inscription reading «όη Παίς Καλός» had been engraved. Translating as “The Boy Is Beautiful” this intricate detail transforms a common vessel into a declaration of homoerotic affection; echoing the sexual liberation of a bygone era.

The Boy Is Beautiful is a queer magazine but also an invitation to unravel the thread of queer Greek chronicles, from myth and history, to contemporary life. It’s a quest to figure out what happened between the time of Zeus and Ganymede, Apollo and Hyacinth, Achilles and Patroclus, the Band of Thebes and the Lesbian Sappho, Harmodius and Aristogeiton and my fascist, sexist, homophobic school mates, Thursdays’ straight-washed history lessons and Symposium-less Plato.

— Leonidas Liolios, Publisher & Editor