Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'Halloween,' by Ken Werner (published by Anthology Editions). We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.

The most captivating photos tell stories words can’t express.

Ken Werner has worn many hats during his more than 50-year career in photography and publishing: Co-founder and Editorial Director of the award-winning magazine Darkroom Photography, Consultant to the influential avant-garde publisher Re/Search, freelance travel writer/photographer with clients like JAL, Cathay Pacific, and Mandarin Hotels.

But today, he is probably best known for a slim but stunning photobook he self-published in 1981, recently reissued in facsimile format by the Brooklyn-based art book publisher Anthology Editions.

In this intimate, revealing interview, Ken "tells all" — well, almost all — about how he created an acclaimed and enduring photobook, and about the profound and utterly unexpected effects the book has had on his life.

The Book

Halloween: A Fantasy in Three Acts (Amazon, Anthology Editions) Originally self-published in 1981, Ken Werner’s Halloween is a cult-classic photobook capturing the raw, unfiltered spirit of San Francisco’s legendary Halloween celebrations from 1976 to 1980. This visual narrative, recently reissued by Anthology Editions, combines surreal costumes, irreverent humor, and striking imagery to document an era defined by creativity, rebellion, and community. Werner’s lens transforms these unstructured street events into a dramatic and evocative story, blending artistry with a poignant celebration of queer culture and identity. A masterclass in storytelling, Halloween immortalizes the magic of fleeting moments with both humor and heart.

What initially drew you to start documenting San Francisco’s adult Halloween celebrations back in 1976?

A tip from a lover, actually. I’d moved to San Francisco earlier that year from New York City, and didn’t know about the extraordinary Halloween street parties then happening on Polk St. But Rita did, and when she told me, with a twinkle in her eye, there would be something happening Halloween night “you might like,” I took the hint—and also took plenty of Tri-X and AA batteries to feed my trusty Minolta SRT-101 and Vivitar flash.

What were your first impressions of what was happening on the street that night?

I was amazed, totally blown away. I’d never seen anything quite like what I saw

—and photographed—that night.

Could you elaborate?

It was as if I’d stumbled down a rabbit-hole into a bizarre and surreal costume dreamworld. The costumes, mostly home-made, ranged from cleverly artistic to utterly terrifying; some were provocatively political, others just puzzling, and quite a few were explicitly erotic.

But the key thing was, the event wasn’t structured, it wasn’t a “parade.” Instead, it was improvised, anarchic, uninhibited; unscripted street theater, you could say. Comic and sexually suggestive street theater, mostly, as the sometimes intoxicated revelers traded jokes and quips with each other. And with me too— the guy in the “photographer’s costume”—when I wasn’t quite fast enough to photograph them unawares.

Did your experience of the event as street theater lead you to structure your book dramatically and subtitle it “A Fantasy in Three Acts”?

Well yes, to some extent, but it wasn’t my primary reason.

By early 1981, when I put the book together, I’d met Lou Stoumen and was about to publish an in-depth interview with him by my ace interviewer Janis Bultman in Darkroom, the magazine I’d co-founded a couple of years earlier. Lou was a noted photographer, photobook author, and filmmaker who thought of his own photobooks as “paper movies.”

I just loved that concept—and immediately realized it would provide a great framework for HALLOWEEN. By arranging my strongest images—together with a minimal, quasi-poetic text—to create a “synthesized night,” I could add a dramatic and engaging narrative thread to my book.

And I had other reasons too—political reasons—for adopting a narrative approach.

Before we jump to the political arena, could you tell me a bit more about Lou Stoumen—he clearly was a major influence for you, but he isn’t exactly a household name in the visual arts world….

No, he isn’t. But I bet you’ve heard of the “Ken Burns Effect”—Ken’s techniques for “animating” still photographs in his documentaries. Well, those techniques were actually pioneered by Lou when Ken Burns was, as they say, “just a gleam in his father’s eye.” In fact, Lou—a Professor of Documentary Filmmaking at UCLA’s Film School—won the 1956 Academy Award for Best Short Documentary for The True Story of the Civil War, which employed those techniques to “animate” Matthew Brady’s Civil War images. And he later won a second Oscar for a documentary collaboration with Marlene Dietrich.

That’s interesting! Let’s return to politics—what role did it play in how you structured HALLOWEEN back in 1981?

Sure. But first, it’s important to note that Ken Burns—a gifted filmmaker who deserves all the praise he has received—has never claimed to be the creator of the “Ken Burns Effect.” It was Steve Jobs, I’m told, who christened it thus, when he first added the enabling software to Apple’s tool set.

Thanks for the clarification.

When I sat down in January 1981 to do a preliminary layout for HALLOWEEN, I was aiming to create a beautiful, attention-grabbing book that would take my three key concerns—I thought of them as “strands”—and weave them together into a compelling, unified whole.

The first strand was a celebration of the irreverence, creativity, humor, and erotic playfulness that much of the city’s populace exhibited back then—as it turned out, just before the AIDS catastrophe. The second was more ego- and career- oriented: I wanted to produce a photobook that was both entertaining and an enduring work of art. And the third—in my mind the most critical—strand was to create a persuasive political document—a “call to action” to those who loved this increasingly-under-threat event as much as I did.

Your Introduction provides a fascinating glimpse into the more-than-a-century-long history of Halloween celebrations in San Francisco, and includes a detailed and passionate explanation of the forces and individuals who were threatening the street parties’ survival in 1981. Could you summarize the 1981 situation for us?

Yeah—here’s the in-a-nutshell version. By the late 1970’s, the street parties were coming under increasing pressure from the city’s right-wing politicians. They’d created what today we’d call a misinformation campaign, using TV to spread distorted and dishonest descriptions of the “goings-on” at the parties. In truth, they were targeting them because they were happening in the growing gay “ghettoes” around Polk and then Castro Street, and their political posturing was an easy way to signal their opposition to “fags and perverts.” Remember, it was only a decade after Stonewall, and many voters still harbored fears and misunderstandings about gay people.

It all came to a head in 1980, when the city made a deliberate attempt to kill the Castro Street party by reversing its previous practice and leaving the street open to traffic, which forced thousands of costumed partiers to cram like sardines onto the sidewalks.

I was terrified—if the city continued its pressure campaign, it would kill the street parties I so loved. What could I do to stop that? Well maybe, just maybe, if I published a book—a book that conjured up the magic of the events, a book that worked as “evidence”—I might rally enough popular support to ensure the parties’ survival.

And that’s where Lou Stoumen’s paper movies came in: a photo-illustrated “story” is a far more persuasive form of “testimony” than just a collection of pictures.

You certainly made your goal clear: the final sentence of your Introduction reads “Somehow, those of us who love this rich yet fragile tradition must find a way for it to continue—it’s too fine a trip to lose.” Did you do anything else in your book to rally popular support?

Absolutely—on both the photographic and practical levels. Regarding my photos, I tried to convey a semi-subliminal “message” with two images I’d placed in critical positions in the layout. And on a more practical level, I printed my P.O. Box address in the back of the book.

Will you reveal your “semi-subliminal message”?

Sure. My “keynote” photo—the one opposite the title/author/publisher page—and the book’s final full-page image both show costumed partiers directly reaching out to the viewer. To my eye, the small keynote image radiates an “I’m troubled, help me” vibe, and the bigger final one echoes that famous “Uncle Sam Wants YOU” Recruitment Poster from WWI.

To underline my message, I printed my P.O. Box address directly opposite that final image, underneath the words “Comments and correspondence invited.”

ObviousIy I was hoping to hear from people who might want to join together to publicly support the event, to combat the misinformation being spread by the homophobes and right-wingers. And to be perfectly frank, I also harbored the fantasy that a gorgeous photo groupie or two might be among them.

Did your strategy succeed?

Ah, well, not with my imaginary groupies…. most importantly though, the Halloween parties did survive—until 2006. What role my self-published, very-limited-edition book played in its survival is debatable, but I do know that over the years, it became increasing recognized as an important historical document as well as a work of art, being acquired by major university and museum libraries all across the US. It’s even in the Bodleian at Oxford.

But here’s the funny thing: the book I created in hopes of saving street parties actually ended up, forty years later, saving me.

Wow, that’s quite a thing to say! Tell us more….

I’d rather save that part till the end—right now, I think you have a couple more questions….

Yes—let’s get technical for a moment. You mentioned carrying Tri-X and a Minolta SLR when you first visited Polk St. That triggered two questions: first, did you only shoot B&W at Halloween? Second: A Minolta? Weren’t they considered “amateur” equipment back then, in the heyday of Leicas and Nikons?

I shot Halloween in B&W exclusively; that is, until after I published my book. I’d process the Tri-X myself and carefully print the best images on exquisite but now-forgotten papers like Brovira and Velour Black. Just the words Velour Black— even now—almost bring tears to my eyes: how I loved that beautiful paper, and how I missed it when it was gone!

But after my book came out, I found, to my surprise, that I couldn’t shoot Halloween in B&W any more—I guess I’d said all I had to say on that subject in that medium. But I couldn’t let these amazing events go undocumented, and so I switched to a color transparency film, Kodachrome 64. And I continued to use Kodachrome—an absolutely gorgeous color medium—until I stopped photographing Halloween after 2001.

Color, of course, offers an entirely different way of seeing an event like Halloween, and many images in my extensive archive are stunning. And happily, because I’d chosen Kodachrome in part for its exceptional stability—when stored properly, anyway—those images seem as vivid and colorful today as the day I got them back from the lab.

And the Minolta?

The SRT-101 happened to fit my hands really well, and I had a superb 35mm (semi-wide-angle) Rokkor-X lens to go with it. The rap back then against “prosumer” models like the SRT-101 was that they were not as durable as pro models like the Nikon F and Canon F1. And that proved true in my case; my SRT’s film transport mechanism got funky after several hard-use years. But I chose to replace it with another prosumer model, Nikon’s FA, rather than their top-of-the-line F: fully professional SLRs then, as now, were heavy and conspicuous, and harder to use while dancing amongst a crowd.

Dancing?

Well, not literally. But one thing I learned from photographing almost 25 years of the increasingly crowded street parties was that the more difficult the shooting conditions got, the more I had to think and move like a dancer to get the shots I wanted. And when things got too crowded and pushy—when my balance was threatened—I had to shift gears immediately and imagine I was a two thousand pound man, rooted to the earth.

This is probably a good time for us to shift gears too. You’ve said your photobook “saved” you. What did you mean?

By the middle of 2022, I was really, really “down.” I’d been very lucky health-wise, I hadn’t caught COVID. But I’d been hit by a “perfect storm” of thorny and distressing personal issues—some connected to the extraordinary measures I’d taken to avoid infection, others to the terrible toll the pandemic had taken on the rest of society. I was feeling “trapped,” my options evaporating, uncontrollable forces squeezing in on me. I feared I could not go on like that….

And then, out of the blue, I got an email. It was from Jesse Pollock, now the Managing Director of Anthology Editions. Anthology is a Brooklyn-based arts and music publisher affiliated with the Mexican Summer music label. That email changed my life—not immediately, I had sunk too low for that—but it marked my lowest point and helped me climb back up from the depths.

What did the email say?

Essentially, that someone had shown them HALLOWEEN, that everyone at Anthology and Mexican Summer loved it, and maybe it was time, after so many decades, to reissue it in a facsimile edition.

How did that make you feel—how did you respond?

Emotionally, it was just such a powerful validation—that work I’d done so long ago was appreciated by a younger generation. And fortunately, I already knew about Anthology and the many interesting and beautiful books they’d either published or reissued. In fact, I’d gone to their website to buy one of their reissues just before the pandemic hit.

But at the moment Jesse contacted me, I just didn’t feel capable of the effort I knew would be necessary to create a facsimile edition that would meet my—and Anthology’s—high standards. I told him so, and asked for some time to get my act together.

And Jesse was OK with that?

Absolutely—I couldn’t have found a more understanding, a more caring and patient publisher.

And with such strong yet gentle support, with the realization that a seed I’d planted more than 40 years before was finally about to flower, I was able to lift myself out of my pit—and then work with Anthology and their extraordinary team of production professionals to create the beautiful facsimile edition of HALLOWEEN that inspired you to request this interview in the first place.

Based on your experiences, do you have any advice to offer a younger person contemplating self-publishing a photobook?

Yes, I do: If you feel passionately about your subject, if you feel you’ve got something important to say to the world, if you feel you’ve done your very, very best to create powerful images and a compelling design, then GO FOR IT—and be ready to be surprised by what happens next, even if “next” is a long way down the road.

To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here. (Amazon, Anthology Editions)

More photography books?

We'd love to read your comments below, sharing your thoughts and insights on the artist's work. Looking forward to welcoming you back for our next [book spotlight]. See you then!