ZT 924

ZT 882

ZT 872

ZT 858

ZT13

Glenn Bishop by Delmonteque

Bob Delmonteque

Bob Delmonteque

Bob Delmonteque

1,000th AMG post

I had a wider conception of what this blog could be when I set out in February 2024 to catalogue highlights (and scholarship!) in my collection, but I can see I have gone down a particularly deep rabbit hole to focus on male physique photography … and let’s be honest, Athletic Model Guild physique photography! 

As I post this, more than half my posts refer to AMG, heavily weighted toward the first five years of the studio’s public existence. But from Forrester Millard to Gable Boudreaux — the Alpha and the Omega of AMG’s first two cataloguing systems, A13-RR13 — I have blogged about thousands of images and (it must be) hundreds of models.

One benefit of this public face has been the interaction with other collectors/enthusiasts, who have helped me to identify everyone from Bob Delmonteque to Phillip Phillips … embarrassing oversights both. My interest lies in the early years, but I have collected broadly, even unidentified models who appealed to me (and, at the time, with no notion of any way to identify them, save for the published directories and their pages of thumbnail photos). 

I have gone on to catalogue the published directories up through the mid-1960s — this turns out to be only infrequently helpful, since identifying the face usually precedes capturing the half-remembered name!

So here’s to Bob Mizer and Athletic Model Guild, and to all of the readers who have perused the blog and commented on the images — I hope it has been as entertaining for you as it has been a pleasure for me.

Mizer on location 3

Down on the farm

Frankie Russell

Mystery men

Bob Delmonteque by Douglas of Detroit

A published and lightly censored version can be seen here.

Bob Delmonteque by Douglas of Detroit

Photo by Dave Martin

Bob Delmonteque Day

More first impressions

To wrap up my occasional series on first appearances in early AMG albums, here are some of the most prominent of those débuts. 

Bob Delmonteque was still active in the 2010s.

Wally Shillcutt and Tabby Anderson were photographed by many studios — perhaps it was Kovert of Hollywood which led them to Athletic Model Guild.

Henry Lenz was Mr. Muscle Beach in 1952, a year or so after his work for AMG was published.

Like some of the others on this list, Rupert Edmund Holovchik — Ed Fury (1928-2023) — worked with other photographers. As was true of Mizer’s first model, Fury’s sessions with AMG spanned years.

Coastal features