Reissued for the first time in decades, an underground classic of street photography documenting San Francisco’s late 1970s Halloween celebrations: the macabre and irreverent “Mardi Gras of the West”
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.