700,000 Transparencies from Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild to be Preserved

August 1, 2015 (San Francisco, CA) - One American photographer. A fifty-year career. Two
MILLION images. Largest collection of his work between the late 1940s and 1992 languishes in non-archival state.

The Bob Mizer Foundation announced today the launch of a Kickstarter fundraising project that will assist in the permanent preservation of the vast collection of color transparencies produced by  controversial Los Angeles photographer Bob Mizer from the late 1940s until his death in 1992.

No single medium in the Foundation’s Athletic Model Guild holdings better displays the progression of Mizer's style than this nearly complete collection of his transparency work. Many of his familiar black and white photos were actually copies of these high quality color transparencies. The preservation of this unique and valuable collection will require a great deal of effort.

Nearly 700,000 35mm color slides are currently held in a “state of arrested decay” in hundreds of boxes. While most of the boxes have remained undisturbed for decades, they are slowly deteriorating and some of the slides, which were once in  orderly sets, have become co-mingled as the boxes were moved over the last decade and the bands holding sets together broke. Volunteers have already begun sorting, cleaning and organizing the transparency sets. Each set is transferred to archival quality polypropylene sleeves which are then marked for identification, photographed and cataloged. The cataloged pages are stored in hanging binders that make the images both accessible
and safe.

“This is a significant body of work that we’ve only begun to uncover. There’s a lot of excitement
about this project at the Foundation,” said President Dennis Bell. “The quality of the transparencies is
spectacular, which is why we need to address their condition as soon as possible.”

Monies raised will go directly to the purchase of polypropylene archival sleeves.

Fundraiser page is at http://kickstarter.BobMizerFoundation.org

About The Bob Mizer Foundation

The Bob Mizer Foundation Inc. was established in 2010 by photographer Dennis Bell for charitable and educational purposes, and as an organization committed to promoting and preserving the works of progressive and controversial photographers. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Foundation is supported by grants, donations, and the contributions made by its devoted members, interns, and volunteers. 

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