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Balco Boys Photo Featuring Barry Bonds Promoting ZMA
This image was taken at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco) located in the San Francisco Bay area on February 11, 2003, more than a year before Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, investigative reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle, first broke their story in December 2004; which story was followed up with the expose book Game of Shadows (ISBN1-592-401996) first published in March 2006. Mitchel Gray, a professional photographer from New York, was on assignment making photographs for a story to appear in Muscle & Fitness Magazine, entitled “Baseball Hard Bodies” one of several body building/muscle/fitness magazines owned by Joe and Ben Weider, principally to promote their interests. Pictured in the photograph are Victor Conte, the owner/mad scientist at Balco; Greg Anderson, Bond's long-time personal trainer who has spent several sojourns in prison for his unwillingness to speak about Bonds' steroid use; and Barry Bonds. This was a “personal” photograph that Victor Conte asked Mitchel Gray to make after Gray had finished making the agreed upon photographs for the magazine. The magazine article was written by Jim Schmaltz and was, in actuality, nothing more than an “advertorial” for Balco and Conte. Schmaltz was also the writer who had previously written stories about Marion Jones and her involvement with Balco. Conte had created a tiny pill, variously called zinc magnesium aspartate or zinc monomethionine aspartate. It was known as ZMA and, originally, was not considered an illegal drug supplement. Its intention was to correct the alleged deficiencies that Conte claimed virtually all humans have in the trace minerals zinc and magnesium. ZMA was alleged to be close to a “miracle drug” correcting and/or alleviating all kinds of physical, and even emotional, issues. Schmaltz's article, published in Muscle & Fitness Magazine in June 2003 alleged that Bonds took three ZMA capsules each day. There are a number of passages in Game of Shadows that reference the Schmaltz article, the photo shoot (page 146), etc. Another photo of Barry Bonds from the commissioned shoot appeared on the cover as well. Offered in this lot is the original 6x4.5 Chrome and a signed 16x20 print of the chrome, by the photographer Mitchel Gray. Neither print nor chrome come with any rights to reproduce.
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