Alex Minsky is a retired Marine corporal turned model. At the beginning of his first tour of Afghanistan in 2009, his Humvee was hit a roadside bomb and his right leg was amputated. He spent 47 days in coma with traumatic brain injury and 17 months in total in hospital. After his brother died from a drug overdose, he entered a 23-month period of alcohol abuse, and to get out of it, he turned to physical fitness. It was during one of his routine workouts that he was approached by a fashion photographer named Tom Cullis. However, his career didn't start to take off until he was photographed nearly nude by the Los Angeles photographer Michael Stokes.