It can sometimes seem like Bob Mizer released his photos in a flood and without a plan. For some reason, perhaps because of the legal peril American physique photographers faced before 1968, he did not make it easy — at least from this vantage point — to navigate his oeuvre, since one (hard to identify) muscular half-naked man may readily be taken for another muscular half-naked man.
But of course there was a plan, and for the audience he sought there was indeed guidance. Even before the (not always satisfactory) Thousand Model Directory was published in 1957, AMG issued materials to guide the collector to Mizer’s preferred outlet: an album showing twelve of the best images in the set and a catalogue (often packed with treasures) from sessions with the model or models.
It turns out to be difficult to reconstruct this vanished world: the linkages seem broken, and the structures imperfect … to say nothing of the variety of prints AMG made and the consistency with which the studio stamped (or did not stamp or otherwise mark) the reverse of the image with its code.
Difficult, but not impossible. This image, from AMG’s Bulletin 54, is one of many of the lists Mizer offered his customers. To decode it — rather like his later symbol codes — one needs familiarity with the albums and catalogues themselves. It is frustrating to lump “Catalog A-ZB13” together: what does that mean? Only the location of many of the most desirable early Athletic Model Guild images, that’s all.
Let me break it down:
A, Variety
B, Variety
C, Forrester Millard
D, John Miller
E, Variety
F, Gene Eberle
G, Variety
H, Howard Olsen
I, Andy Kozak
J, Forrester Millard
K, Variety
L, Larry Farrell
Continued here.
