Originally published in limited quantities in 1981, Halloween: A Fantasy in Three Acts collects photographs taken by Ken Werner at San Francisco’s adult Halloween celebrations from 1976 to 1980, assembling a visual narrative of American consciousness and popular culture as seen through lenses of queerness, black humor, and the macabre. Once touted as the “Mardi Gras of the West,” the raunchy, mostly open-air nighttime costume parties documented by Werner were hugely popular events organized primarily by LGBT and sex worker advocates, attracting tens of thousands of curious attendees as well as conservative ire from around the nation. Reissued for the first time in decades, this underground classic explores a bacchanalia worthy of the pagan and occult roots of the Halloween ritual—a magical dream/nightmare-land of terror and joy, with uninhibited celebrants reveling in stunning self-made guises that combine cartoon logic, sexual extravagance, and a highly irreverent take on American mythologies.
Ken Werner is a professional photographer who currently splits his time between the US and Australia. His photographs have been featured in publications such as Camera 35, Modern Photography, and Asahi Camera, and can also be found in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For many years he lived in San Francisco, where he created and served as Editorial Director of the award-winning magazine Darkroom Photography, providing an influential resource to the development of traditional film photography as craft and art form. He has also worked as a commercial travel photographer, producing photo essays for in-flight magazines and hotel chains, and served as Consultant for the radical Bay Area publisher RE/SEARCH.
