Alum Hal Fischer's Castro scene photos revived in 'The Gay Seventies'

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Fischer, now 69, moved to San Francisco in 1975 to study photography in the graduate program at San Francisco State. His work was soon featured in exhibitions like “Photography and Language” and he became part of an unofficial movement of photographers, including Lew Thomas and Donna-Lee Phillips, who used a combination of text and images in ways that expanded, or sometimes reinterpreted or contradicted the imagery. By 1977, Fischer’s “Gay Semiotics” series and photo book used those techniques to document and explain the gay culture around San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood.