Hal Fischer: Unseen

Curatorial instigated by Noah Ross
April 19 - June 1, 2024
Reception: Friday, April 19, 5:00 -8:00 p.m.

Hal Fischer (1950-), every queer’s favorite semiotician of the delicate hanky, and mainstream photographic linguist par excellence, is back to present little-known works that both pre- and post-date Gay Semiotics, his landmark 1977 series that blurs the classical and the modern, as well as the traditional and subversive. You might know him from his other series from that period, 18th near Castro St. x 24 (1978) or Boy-Friends (1979), both featured in The Gay Seventies (2019), a compilation of his late 1970s work. But did you know that before Gay Semiotics he played with bleach? Or that later he cruised through Europe? 

I hadn’t either, that is, until I met Hal at the San Francisco Art Book Fair and engineered an invite to his Lower Haight abode to see his work. Surprisingly reluctant at first, I used every trick in my book to twist his arm into granting Et al. the opportunity to exhibit his bleach prints and related works from the 1970s. I’ll be honest – it was a job for more than my youthful charm and dashing good looks. It was the culture! The beating culture pulsing us on to memorialize an era of queer life in San Francisco. And it was Hal, it was all Hal, who somehow came around to sharing these largely unknown works, which to me remain relevant, useful, and still, as always, sexy.

– Noah Ross, Curatorial Instigator