?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(CHAMPION STUDIO--WALTER KUNDZICZ)
Approximately 120 35mm Kodak slides of male physique photos. The collection features men posing erotically in indoor and outdoor scenes, some with themed props and sets, others more candidly in dorm or locker room settings. Almost all fully or mostly nude, depicting college dorms and locker rooms. 35mm color slides, the images measuring 25x35 mm; 1x1⅜ inches, and the reverse, the mounts 51 mm; 2 inches square, some with a model's name or numerical notation in ink on the mount. 1960-1968 and one 1980.
Under the name Champion Studio, Walter Kundzicz became one of the last great pioneers of physique photography when he entered the field in the late 1950s. Unlike the muscle-bound beefcake imagery of earlier the decade, Champion's handsome young models were a new breed. Not only did Kundzicz push legal boundaries with sexier props and more revealing imagery, his color photographs also pushed the established aesthetics, featuring sunny, youthful models in everyday settings, beautifully capturing a new era on the cusp of sexual revolution. These photographs became wildly popular with mail-order customers and collectors because they stood in stark contrast to most of the physique photography available at that time.
