Hal Fischer: Gay Semiotics

Hal Fischer's Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men (1977) is one of the most important publications associated with California conceptual photography in the 1970s. This new edition reproduces the look and feel of the original volume, which reconfigured into a book format the 24 text-embedded images of Fischer's 1977 photographic series Gay Semiotics. The photographs in Gay Semiotics present the codes of sexual orientation and identification Fischer saw in San Francisco's Castro and Haight Ashbury districts, ranging from such sexual signifiers as handkerchiefs and keys to depictions of the gay fashion "types" of that era--from "basic gay" to "hippie" and "jock." Gay Semiotics also features Fischer's critical essay, which is marked by the same wry, anthropological tone found in the image/text configurations. Fischer's book circulated widely, finding a worldwide audience in both the gay and conceptual art communities. Fischer's insistence on the visua