Signifiers for a Male Response, 1977

Aperture is pleased to present an exclusive limited-edition print by Hal Fischer, which is featured in Hal Fischer: Seminal Works (2025). Fischer’s first Aperture monograph brings together his iconic series Gay Semiotics with his rarely seen early photography and features a dynamic range of essays that consider queer culture and social change in San Francisco.

In Signifiers for a Male Response (1977), one of the best-known images from Gay Semiotics, Fischer portrays the elements of queer street style—earrings, handkerchiefs, keys—that broadcast a range of desires in San Francisco’s Castro and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods of the late 1970s. Gay Semiotics is now recognized as a vital record of gay culture before AIDS, capturing the identities of a community inventing itself during an era of liberation. Released to celebrate Fischer’s career-defining work, this limited-edition print offers a rare chance to collect an important piece of photographic history.

Proceeds from this exclusive print sale directly support the artist and Aperture’s nonprofit publishing, educational, and public programs.

Hal Fischer
Signifiers for a Male Response, 1977
Archival pigment print
Image size: 12.14 x 7.94 in.
Paper size: 14 x 11 in.
Edition of 20 and 3 artist’s proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist
$1,500

Hal Fischer (born in Kansas City, Missouri, 1950) is an artist, art critic, and museum professional. Fischer’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions and is featured in both public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His books include Gay Semiotics (1978) and The Gay Seventies (2019).