Gay Semiotics (1977)

• Published: NFS Press, San Francisco, 1977
• Edition: First edition
• Binding: Lettered wrappers
• Pages: 56 pp.
• Dimensions: Small quarto
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0-917986-03-2
• Signature: Inscribed by Fischer.
• Condition: Very good; corners bowed.

Hal Fischer's study of the visual codes of gay men in San Francisco's Castro and Haight: handkerchiefs worn in the left or right back pocket, keys, earrings, and types from the hippie to the leatherman, each photographed and captioned in the deadpan voice of an ethnographic report. The twenty-four photographs with text were made first as prints for the wall, then gathered into this book by NFS Press.

It is a key work of 1970s photo-conceptualism and a joke with a serious point. Borrowing the language of structuralist semiotics, Fischer showed how a community made itself legible to its own members, then undercut the system: a handkerchief, one caption allows, may simply be for blowing one's nose. Reissued in 2015 and since shown at SFMOMA and the Getty, it is now read as one of the founding works of queer conceptual photography.