Overview

Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies is the first monograph to feature the complete set of photo-text works that Hal Fischer produced between 1977 and 1979 in San Francisco's Haight and Castro neighborhoods. In addition to Gay Semiotics, Fischer's best-known work (its recent facsimile edition now out of print) Hal Fischer: The Golden Age of Gay includes 18th Near Castro Street x 24, which was published as an artist's book, Boy-Friends, A Salesman and two other series Civic Center and Cheap Chic Homo.
Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies brings together, for the first time in nearly four decades, Fischer's major photo-text investigations of gay life in late 1970s San Francisco. Unapologetic, humorous, periodically subversive and conceptually driven, Fischer's photo-text investigations continue to engage and amuse audiences. As the work demonstrates, the late 1970s after Stonewall and before AIDS was a magical moment to be young and gay in San Francisco.
Hal Fischer (born 1950) grew up in Highland Park, Illinois. He arrived in San Francisco in 1975 to pursue an MA in photography at San Francisco State. Through his work as an art reviewer and photographer, he soon became embedded in the Bay Area's artistic and intellectual scene. He continues to live and work in San Francisco.

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9780982767177

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[The Gay Seventires features] Gay Semiotics, a landmark series of photo-text works providing a pioneering analysis of gay historical vernacular as it unfolded on the streets of San Francisco's Castro and Haight-Asbury districts.--Sara Rosen AnOther Man In 'Gay Semiotics' and other works by Fischer, the use of text, diagrams and social decoding of the images feels extremely contemporary in the world of blogs and photo-diagram magazine features. Even many of the fashions and hairstyles -- especially the mustaches -- feel of the present moment. What surprised many at the time, Fischer says, was that his text imbued the images with a type of humor, simply by explaining the images and their social relevance in the gay community. For him, the words were always as important as the images, and perhaps became even more important as the photo books progressed. --Tony Bravo San Francisco Chronicle While Gay Semiotics is likely his best-known work, The Gay Seventies proves it was not an outlier in Fischer's practice.... in Boy-Friends, portraits of what can only be Fischer's sexual partners (their eyes covered with identity-concealing black bars) get sorted into a coded, highly personal classification system, with Fischer describing the beginning and end of each relationship.... In each of six series included in The Gay Seventies Fischer reveals slivers of himself (and his desires), while maintaining a documentary distance from his subject matter and a crisp visual style--a feat in the context of the massive social, political and demographic shifts that took place in 1970s San Francisco. --Sarah Hotchkiss KQED

[The Gay Seventires features] Gay Semiotics, a landmark series of photo-text works providing a pioneering analysis of gay historical vernacular as it unfolded on the streets of San Francisco's Castro and Haight-Asbury districts.--Sara Rosen AnOther Man

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