Bob Mizer’s glorious bodybuilder images are celebrated in fabulous tome from Taschen

Date
21 July 2016

American photographer Bob Mizer was known for pushing boundaries and he became infamous for his raunchy images of male bodybuilders that sparked controversy during the 40s and 50s. His glorious studies of the male form are beautifully brazen and his work has influenced artists and photographers like David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe. In a two-volume tome, Taschen celebrates his salacious photography over 1000 pages.

The photographer’s first pictures of rippling men were aptly taken on Muscle Beach in Venice, California in 1945. To market these images, Mizer founded photo agency Athletic Model Build, giving birth to what we now know as “physique photography.” While photography of bodybuilders already existed before Mizer started working, never had they been so provocative.

After launching Physique Pictorial, America’s first gay magazine in 1951, six years later Mizer took his beefcake photography to new levels by publishing a catalogue of all the men he’d photographed called 1000 Model Directory. A second volume of the catalogue followed in 1968 with even more photographs of strapping young men in posing straps – a precursor to the G-string.

It’s these catalogues that Taschen has collated together using the photographer’s original 4 × 5 negatives, showcasing these bodacious babes in all their glory. Originally laid out in sets of 12 to a page, at the time viewers were both titillated and frustrated at the stingy image size. In Bob Mizer. AMG Model Directory however, full page spreads are the order of the day as a quarter of a million male nudes have been whittled down for the book. A humorous, aesthetically pleasing study of the male physique, the book demonstrates Mizer’s tenacity and passion as a photographer.

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Tachen: Bob Mizer: AMG Model Directory, Dick DuBois and Hank Prater (1952) © The Bob Mizer Foundation, Inc.

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Tachen: Bob Mizer: AMG Model Directory, Derby and Boris Demitroff (1960) © The Bob Mizer Foundation, Inc.

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Tachen: Bob Mizer: AMG Model Directory, Derby and Boris Demitroff (1960) © The Bob Mizer Foundation, Inc.

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Tachen: Bob Mizer: AMG Model Directory

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Tachen: Bob Mizer: AMG Model Directory, Derby and Boris Demitroff (1960) © The Bob Mizer Foundation, Inc.

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Tachen: Bob Mizer: AMG Model Directory

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Tachen: Bob Mizer: AMG Model Directory (cover)

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About the Author

Rebecca Fulleylove

Rebecca Fulleylove is a freelance writer and editor specialising in art, design and culture. She is also senior writer at Creative Review, having previously worked at Elephant, Google Arts & Culture, and It’s Nice That.

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