Product Description
Hal Fischer’s 1977 photographic study, is a curious anthropological exploration of gay culture. The pictures are taken in and around San Francisco’s gay enclaves, Castro Street and Haight Ashbury, during an exciting and significant period in gay history. Fischer was thus suitably placed to capture the newly found liberation of gay America during this post-stonewall and pre-AIDS period. His focus is mainly on the semiotic language of dress and the signalling devices intended for a male response. He adds diagrammatic annotations to his archetypal images, such as the difference between a right (aggressive) or left (passive) ear piercing, the behavioural tendencies of a man wearing a red handkerchief in his back pocket at a leather bar, the place of amyl nitrate and many more signifiers which to a contemporary eye almost feel stereotypical but at the time were brave statements about homosexuality. The project was Fischer’s response to the lack of any books or written information dealing with the visual iconography of the gay lifestyle at this time, but in retrospect it is hard to ascertain whether the images are intended to be purely academic or playfully irreverent.
