Bob Mizer
RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com
Seventy-five years ago, photographer Bob Mizer launched the magazine Physique Pictorial which would become groundbreaking as a publication of its type. Hard-bodied men were featured in each issue, from its 1951 launch to its final issue in 1990.
In 2017, the magazine was relaunched, a quarter century after Mizer’s death. In the new book Timeless, the new generation of Physique Pictorial photographers are celebrated through more than 200 full-color pages in hardback.
“The photographers selected to appear in this book represent a wide variety of backgrounds and artistic styles from around the world,” Dennis Bell, Bob Mizer Foundation Museum and Photographic Archives founder, president and CEO said. “Our Physique Pictorial relaunch celebrates its 10th anniversary next year, and we wanted to introduce our publication and, by extension, these artists, to an entirely new audience.”
A book release party will be held in Dallas on April 19 at Preston Tower Community Room, sponsored by local philanthropist James Lynn Williams. A supporter of area arts organizations with strong LGBTQ+ ties to organizations like Uptown Players, Turtle Creek Chorale and Bruce Wood Dance Dallas, he extends his support to the visual arts of Mizer and the museum.
“His generosity has been genuinely transformative for us,” Bell said. “Jim understood that mission from the start, and his support allowed us to vastly expand our programming and our organization of the archives.
“It felt right to hold the book launch in Dallas,” Bell added.
The archive, based in San Francisco, features a staggering collection of more than 100,000 vintage photographs, negatives and films. Much of Williams’ philanthropy toward the museum has helped in the conservation of this unique slice of queer history.
“I have become good friends with Dennis over the past two years and have been delighted to help him further the aims of the museum,” Williams said. “This book is a culmination of my involvement, and I absolutely share his passion for the museum’s mission. Affirmation of the LGBTQ+ community is needed now more than ever.”
Mizer was a visionary photographer and filmmaker who founded the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) in Los Angeles in 1945 and launched Physique Pictorial magazine in 1951. A pioneer of queer visual culture, Mizer produced more than 2,000,000 negatives and thousands of short films that challenged censorship laws and documented the male form decades ahead of his time. His work laid the groundwork for the broader acceptance of queer imagery in American culture.
Publications like these were queer coded for a different time, but Bell explains the purpose Physique Pictorial provided.
“The coding was a survival strategy. Mizer had to frame everything in the language of athletics because anything more explicit could mean prosecution,” he said. “Today, when you look at those images and read those captions, knowing all of that, you’re not just looking at a photograph of a man, you’re looking at an act of defiance that had to disguise itself as something innocent.
“For younger readers especially, who’ve never had to hide in that way, I think that lands hard. It puts a very human face on what censorship actually costs.”
The book features works by more than 40 photographers, and, while they bring their own eye to the publication, they also recall Mizer’s style.
The aesthetic is putting that bold masculinity in stylized lighting that recalls Mizer’s work. The intention has reverence for the subject.
“ You can see that direct lineage in the work of photographers like Waynn Low and Steven Menendez,” Bell said. “Mizer was never just documenting bodies; he was creating a visual language. These artists are fluent in it.” n
The book release party will be held April 18 from 2-5 p.m. at Preston Tower Community Room, 6211 W. Northwest Highway. To order a copy of Timeless or for more information about the archives, visit BobMizer.org.