Photographer Bob Mizer, who died in 1992, founded the
Athletic Model Guild in 1945 and Physique Pictorial in 1951,
debuted Tom of Finland, shot Alan Ladd, Victor Mature and Arnold Schwarzenegger,
invented the “posing strap” (a letter-of-the-law loincloth
reluctantly sewn for him by his mother) and served prison time in 1954
for sending what was then defined as “obscene material”
through the mail.
This compact but manically fascinating exhibition includes
both full-size portraits of the models, drifters and runaways who moved
in and out of Mizer’s Los Angeles home and a series of “catalogue
boards,” the 16- or 20-image paste-ups of scenes and scenarios
he assembled both for his own records and to send out to customers.
Cowboys, greasers, ancient Roman slave boys and Marines wrestle, pretend
to wrestle, and pretend to pretend; but if an image got too explicit,
like one in the catalogue board “A Gift for Demetrius,”
Mizer might, after a discouraging police raid, decide to slice it out
and discard it.
At once heartbreakingly candid and suffused with fraught
artificiality, the remaining pictures look, from the other side of Stonewall,
like small miracles of misdirection: there’s so much happening
off camera that makes itself present, because the whole photo points
to it, but is not known, because it’s defined by its position
out of sight.
Jim Carroll with Antlers, a 1951 silver print, shows a muscular
blond on hands and knees, facing the camera with a look of confident
concentration on his face and two modest antlers on his head. Fred
Fawcett as Nazi, 1976, shows the world’s most innocent stormtrooper,
his uniform a little too big and his cap ready to fall off. And Rick
Gordon, Rooftop Studio, Los Angeles, 1972, shows a naked young
man with his dog in an outdoor scene with artificial grass, artificial
autumn leaves and artificial boulders. He sits on a stump leaning forward,
pointing out of frame with his left hand and using his right to point
the dog’s face in the same direction.
— Will Heinrich, Gallerist
NY.
Discover more about Bob
Bob’s
World. The Life and Boys of AMG’s Bob Mizer
from TASCHEN
Invisible-Exports
Open Wednesday - Sunday, 11 AM
to 6 PM
14A Orchard Street, New York, NY 10002 ·
Map
· 212.226.5447
Invisible-Exports
Website