Bob Mizer. Athletic Model Guild. 45th Ed.

In 1945 Bob Mizer began taking photographs of strapping young men on Muscle Beach in Venice, California. In December of that year, he formed the Athletic Model Guild to market his photos, and “physique photography” was born. Before Mizer there were bodybuilders and men who photographed them, but AMG photos, even those of the same men, were different, subtly provocative, discretely aimed at a gay audience. They weren’t nude but showed as much as the law allowed in 1945.

In 1951 Mizer launched Physique Pictorial, America’s first indisputably gay magazine, bringing his photos of top bodybuilders to grateful readers worldwide. By the late ’50s Mizer had photographed over 1,000 men, moving from the beach to his quirky Los Angeles studio, where he introduced props including Greek columns, Roman headdresses, rear projection, and famously, his mother’s glassware, for theatrical Hollywood effect. In 1957 he published a catalog featuring all his men, titled 1000 Model Directory. In 1968 a second 1000 Model Directory followed, with the men photographed in the intervening years. The little 98-page books became instant collectibles, but the photos were so small, 12 to a page, that they were as frustrating to view as they were titillating.

TASCHEN’s edition prints from Mizer’s original 4 x 5 negatives to present these handsome hunks in stunning clarity. Editor Dian Hanson trawled through a quarter million male nudes to select this lineup of top models, including movie stars Sammy Jackson, Richard Harrison, and Ed Fury. Glenn Corbett of TV’s 77 Sunset Strip is also here, as well as top bodybuilders Chris Dickerson, Dick Dubois, Vince Gironda, Bill Grant, Zabo Koszewski, Don Peters, Charles Stroeder, and John Tristram.