'I'm not sure I'd draw a distinction between the flag and his drag.He takes a nationalist symbol that demands patriotic fealty, that one adheres to a notion of borders, and he rewrites it so it's about everyone and everything. A good quote from the end of the article: There's an article in the SF Chronicle about Gilbert, the flag, and fabulously enough, his protest drag costumes. That first flag was hand dyed in trash cans and sewn in the attic of the Gay Community Center on SF’s Grove Street. People seeing those images would see themselves in its waving colored stripes.
Baker knew that the power of this flag would start with the distribution of its documentation. The decision to edit the stripes down to six was credited to the cost of reproducing color photographs in those days. In Baker’s original design for the polychrome rainbow, the flag included eight colored stripes, two more colors than the flag we know today. That first flag was hung on Jin the United Nations Plaza. The most potent and ubiquitous of those signs, The Rainbow Flag, was designed by San Francisco artist and activist Gilbert Baker, who passed away in 2017. Gilbert Baker original Rainbow Flag design, 1978Īs the Bay Area gets ready to celebrate its Gay Pride this weekend, we reflect on the symbols that make those celebrations so powerful.
