AN EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION
THAT CELEBRATES THE POWER OF CONTROVERSIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
The Bob Mizer Foundation (BMF) is an acclaimed teaching and research institution devoted to photography based censorship education.
The Foundation, a leader in physique culture education, engages 25,000 followers annually and promotes human rights, social justice and civil rights awareness through education and commemoration of the photography of the mid 20th century.
Through our archives, collections, and programs, our education assists students and visitors in developing an understanding of the causes, signs and consequences of censorship, racism, and stereotyping in any society.
The lower down the social scale we go, the more virulent forms of prejudice are we able to discover, and the more ignorant are the excuses given to justify attitudes often completely lacking in logic.
SO IT BEGINS...
Bob Mizer Early Work, 1945-1955
June 1 – July 15, 2023
So It Begins....Bob Mizer Early Works, 1945-1955, which runs June 1-July 15, 2023, reveals an artist that is largely unfamiliar to even his long-time admirers. Before the Athletic Model Guild became a name well known to male physique photographers, in the years immediately before and during the founding of AMG’s flagship publication Physique Pictorial, the subjects of Mizer’s photographs represented a cross section of Americans who were as far from the tanned, muscular and masculine models who would come to be synonymous with the Mizer name. “These were regular, everyday people,” says Den Bell, the Foundation’s founder, president and CEO. “He shot portraits of elegant women in pearls and full makeup. Young men whose faces were horribly scarred. Fully nude, obese men. These are images that are certain to surprise the viewer, but also to spark a conversation about an artist finding fascination among that which is traditionally unremarkable.”
THE WORK of BOB MIZER
Our massive collections and archives hold literally millions of artifacts, through which the story of the evolution of censorship can be told. The cornerstone of our archives is the enormous body of work by Bob Mizer, and is supplemented by virtually every working artist of his time.
Unknown, 1951
Jim New, 1985
Unknown, 1952
Jim Carroll, 1957
Unknown, 1957
Unknown [jumping], 1973
Unknown, 1952
Unknown, 1956
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Learn the story of Bob Mizer's massive photographic estate and the future we have planned for it.
His photography was a seedbed for a myriad of image makers, both amateur and professional – such as Robert Mapplethorpe, David Hockney, Jim French, Bruce Weber and Andy Warhol.
Working out of his house in Los Angeles, Mizer created his legendary studio, Athletic Model Guild, part business, part watering hole and wayward house for youths, but primarily ground zero for the new era of male imagery. Using home made sets, or light and slide projections, Bob Mizer prefigured what would later become ‘constructed’ photography in the early 1980’s.
Mizer also produced the widely circulated men’s magazine, Physique Pictorial, which introduced and promoted the artists, George Quaintance and Tom of Finland to the world at large. By producing Physique Pictorial, Mizer infiltrated/flooded American culture with images of men and a fantastic spectrum of masculinity.
With knowledge of art history and film, Mizer’s work was meticulous, intelligent, humorous, and eloquent – a language that could only come from the mid-century, golden age of Southern California.
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