The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, March 27

Jim Burroway

March 27th, 2012

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Bob Mizer: 1922. Before there was the internet and its most lucrative offering, online porn, and before the proliferation of dead-tree porn in the late 1960s through the 1980s, there was the “physique” magazines that sprang up after World War II. Bob Mizer was the mild-mannered publisher and photographer for Physique Pictorial, one of many such magazines that published “beefcake” photographs under the guise of bodybuilding and health. His photography studio, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG), specialized in men (gay and straight) doing bodybuilding poses or wrestling in pairs. But that thin guise — almost as thin as the posing pouch that his models wore — wasn’t enough to keep him from being convicted in 1947 of unlawful distribution of obscene materials and serving a nine month sentence at a work camp in Saugus, California.

That setback barely put a dent into Mizer’s career. In addition the Physique Pictorial, Mizer added Young Adonis in 1963 and Grecian Guild Studio Quarterly in 1966. When obscenity laws were relaxed in 1968 allowing full male frontal nudity, Mizer quickly adapted with the times. Through it all, AMG was very much a family affair, with Mizer’s mother (her skills as a seamstress was put to use in creating a line of skimpy briefs and posing pouches) and brother (an accountant) playing important roles in the business. Mizer would photograph thousands of men and take nearly a million different images. He also produced over 3000 film titles from the 1950s to the 1980’s, which mostly consisted of film )(and later, videotape) of his photo sessions. He died in 1992, and AMG went dormant for a while. But under new ownership, Mizer’s archives are being catalogued and digitally remastered. Mizer never thought of himself as an artists, but his work has garnered a significant re-appraisal in the past two decades, which influenced artists like Robert Mappelthorpe and David Hockney. The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2004 that “Mizer’s pictures are historically important because they capture a time, place and attitude so vividly that it still seems to be with us. His photographs are inspiring because they were not made to fill a market niche that already existed. Instead, they created the niche and then filled it with aplomb.” In 2009, Taschen Books released the monograph Bob’s World: The Life and Boys of A.M.G.’s Bob Mizer. You can see some of his films on YouTube here.

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This your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

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