Bob Mizer Residence

Place

Bob Mizer Residence and Studio

Photographer Bob Mizer founded one of the first erotic art publications from his studio and home in Pico-Union in the 1940s.

Photographer Bob Mizer was born on March 27, 1922 in Hailey, Idaho. Mizer was best known for his images of bodybuilders and for exploring American masculinity through photography. In 1945, he founded his own studio at his home in Pico-Union, known as the Athletic Model Guild (AMG).

It was at this studio that Mizer began publishing Physique Pictorial, which was one of the first magazines to circulate erotic photographs of muscular men. In order to gain widespread distribution, Physique Pictorial marketed itself as a fitness magazine, even though its photos were targeted to an underground audience of gay men.

The nature of these photographs was considered to be so graphic at the time that they attracted the attention of law enforcement. As a result, Mizer was arrested in 1947 for taking nude photographs of a seventeen-year-old model and was sentenced to six months in prison.

Today, the Craftsman-style residence is a contributing building to the Pico-Union Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) and the South Bonnie Brae Tract Historic District (National Register of Historic Places).