Laid Bare: Essays and Observations Read Online Free PDF Page B

producing his own work. Dennis was not only a devotee of Bob Mizer’s beefcake shots, he found he was able to mimic the look and style of those classic images on his own, continuing the tradition without actually trying to recreate what had already been done to perfection.
     
    The success of Bell’s first physique-related website convinced him that interest in physique photos and the Athletic Model Guild had not dimmed in the years since Mizer’s death.
     
    Learning of the availability of the AMG catalog, Bell decided the time was right to introduce this piece of history to a new generation. Surprisingly, the entire catalog—negatives, films, videos, magazines, even some recognizable props—was intact. Bell purchased the lot and found himself with a huge amount of material that needed to be moved somewhere.
     
    The storeroom at the Athletic Model Guild offices resembles a Kodak warehouse: thousands of yellow boxes line scores of shelves containing just under one million negatives. The sheer number took the new owner somewhat by surprise. “As I unpacked the collection, I kept buying more shelving to hold the boxes.” Fortunately for history Bob Mizer was meticulously organized. “Today’s digital photography storage and cataloging systems are way beyond Bob’s system,” says Bell. “He used an alpha-numeric system, starting with A-1, A-2, A-3 etc. When he reached the end of Z, he continued at ZA1, ZA2, …ZB1, ZB2, and so forth. This gives a final image ID number of something like XV23-AS.”
     
    So even though the system doesn’t describe the contents of each image, “the negatives are organized enough that if I have a model name or image number, I can go into the archive stack and find that image within a couple minutes. There is also a card catalog that was kept with every model who was shot, and [whatever images] that model made.”
     
    Some of those models went on to become known in other avenues. Along with Andy Warhol superstar Joe D’Allesandro and Dennis Cole (future husband of Charlie’s Angel Jaclyn Smith), “Arnold (Schwarzenegger) posed for Bob in the AMG compound just about 2 years after the Pumping Iron movie was made in 1973…showing an incredible set of muscles in a leopard print swimsuit.”
     
    Ideally, the AMG staff will eventually include a pair of archivists to catalog and digitize the collection. “Only about three thousandhave been digitized,” in the fourteen months since Bell acquired them, “enough for the new website member section. The entire process could take 3-5 years.” After converting every image, the original negatives will be stored under archival conditions, with the digital files used for prints and publishing.
     
    Several of the 10,000+ models who posed for Bob Mizer have gotten in touch with Bell and the AMG--mostly through the internet—some of them decades after the original photo shoots. Dennis is actively pursuing more such contacts and meetings. In addition to providing the models with prints, he hopes to produce a video documentary in which the men recount their experiences posing for Physique Pictorial.
     
    But, under Dennis Bell’s watchful eye, the Athletic Model Guild is looking to the future as much as it is preserving its own storied past. His plans for the company and its assets were instrumental in convincing the Mizer estate to sell him the materials. In addition to re-issuing the existing images and films, Dennis is drawing on his own experience in the adult film industry to carry-on and expand the AMG brand. “Although Bob tried to film hardcore in the 1970s, he wasn’t extremely successful at it. The difference between me and Bob is our experience working with hardcore. With my experience, AMG will now be able to produce full sexual situations that Bob couldn’t do.”
     
    While the reincarnated Athletic Model Guild has all the tools of the digital age at its disposal it is, essentially, still the dreamchild of one man. The symmetry