Robert Henry Mizer, known as Bob Mizer, was an American photographer and filmmaker, known for pushing boundaries of depicting male homoerotic content with his work in the mid 20th century.
Biography
Bob Mizer’s earliest photographs appeared in 1942, in both color and black and white, but his career was catapulted into infamy in 1947 when he was convicted of the unlawful distribution of obscene material through the US mail. The material in question was a series of black and white photographs, taken by Mizer, of young bodybuilders wearing what were known as posing straps—a precursor to the G-string. He served a nine-month prison sentence at a work camp in Saugus, California for what now seems tame. At the time, male near-nudity was not only frowned upon, but illegal. In spite of societal expectations and pressure from law enforcement, Mizer built a veritable empire on his beefcake photographs and films. He established the influential studio, the Athletic Model Guild in 1945, but by the time he published the first issue of Physique Pictorial he was operating the studio on his own at his home near downtown Los Angeles. He photographed thousands of men, building a collection that includes nearly two million different images and thousands of films and videotapes. In the 1950s, several other photographers were doing similar work, such as Alonzo Hanagan in New York City, Douglas of Detroit, Don Whitman of Western Photography Guild in Denver, and, on the West Coast, Russ Warner in Oakland and Dave Martin in San Francisco. Regardless of the attempts to suppress his work, Mizer continued to pursue his vision, influencing artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and David Hockney. Examples of Mizer's work are now held by esteemed educational and cultural institutions the world over, and can be found in various books, galleries, and private art collections. New York University’s 80 Washington Square East Gallery presented what it called "the first major institutional solo presentation of Bob Mizer’s work to be shown anywhere in the world" in early 2014, where artists Bruce Yonemoto, Karen Finley and Vaginal Davis added to NYU's scholarship on Mizer. The New York Times reported that the exhibition "makes a good case for as an artist with interests and imagination considerably more expansive than what his popular reputation suggests." In 1999, Beefcake, a docudrama directed by Thom Fitzgerald, was produced, inspired by a picture book by F. Valentine Hooven III.
Films
Bob Mizer produced over 3,000 film titles from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. In August 1980, he began using the then-new technology of VHS, and recorded over 7500 hours of his photo sessions until his death in 1992.
