The Pink Triangle: how a symbol moved from one of persecution to power

It’s estimated that 100,000 gay men were arrested during the Nazi regime and that between 10,000 and 15,000 of them were sent to concentration camps, having had their names added to so-called “Pink Lists”. 65 per cent of those are believed to have died as a result. The wearing of badges in concentration camps to classify why you had been arrested was commonplace and while the yellow star is perhaps the most well known, prisoners were also branded with a red triangle if they were deemed a political prisoner: communist, socialist, trade unionist, etc. A black triangle was affixed to your clothing if you had been singled out as a lesbian, a symbol also used to denote the mentally ill, drug addicts, prostitutes or pacifists, among other things. Initially, gay or bisexual men and transgender women wore a variety of badges but the Pink Triangle emerged as the standard.

When the Allies defeated Germany, the majority of survivors in concentration camps were set free, and the Allied Forces demanded the dissolution of all laws instated by the Nazi Party. However, they left it up to the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) to decide whether certain laws which had existed prior to Hitler’s reign would remain in place. One such law was Paragraph 175, which made homosexual acts between males a crime and which, deemed not to be a product of Nazi ideology, wasn’t overturned fully until 1994. As a result, many gay men continued to be imprisoned. The law was reformed somewhat in 1969, narrowing the crime to include sex with a man less than 21 years old, homosexual prostitution, and the exploitation of a relationship of dependency (such as employing or supervising a person in a work situation). This perhaps begins to explain why the Pink Triangle, of all the symbols associated with concentration camps, remained in the consciousness of the community it had persecuted.

It’s following the reform of Paragraph 175 that we begin to see the use of the Pink Triangle in activist circles, like the gay liberation group Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) which rallied gay men in Germany, asking them to wear the Pink Triangle as a memorial to past victims and in protest of continuing discrimination. It also found footing in the US in the 1980s, especially after the release of Bent, as the queer community found itself amidst a shocking epidemic: the AIDS crisis. It was in the latter half of the 80s that Avram Finkelstein, an activist and member of an anonymous collective decided to print the Pink Triangle on a poster reading “Silence = Death” in response to the crisis that was gripping the US, the need for transparency within the gay community and to form a connection to the government’s lack of response to the epidemic which meant gay men were dying on a colossal and devastating scale. That poster went on to become the central visual for AIDS activism and, as a result, the Pink Triangle is synonymous with the cause to this day.

Avram grew up in a political household during the 60s – his parents were heavily involved in civil rights and social justice issues. “I was kind of born with a poster in my hand,” he tells It’s Nice That on a video call from his New York City studio, where he is now a practising artist, author and teacher. It wasn’t until the AIDS crisis that Avram’s politics connected with his personhood as a queer man though. “I was a practising artist, and the man that I had decided to build my life around started showing signs of immunosuppression in the late 70s. And by 1984, he was dead,” he recalls. Because of his political background, he had the idea to form a small consciousness-raising group which turned out to include five other gay men – Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Soccarás – by late 1985. The idea was to remain anonymous, borrow ideas from feminist consciousness-raising organising principles, instigate riots in the upcoming election (hence the anonymity) and bring awareness to the mass mortality happening in front of their eyes.

“We started meeting and talking about our anxieties about that moment in history – people were still not saying the word AIDS – and at the end of every session, we were talking about the political environment surrounding these questions,” he explains of the context from which the idea to create a poster developed. “It was very much my emotional and political vocabulary… [the way] young people used to communicate with each other, outside of power structures, was to place posters in the streets.” They spent a total of nine months working on the design and began pasting it in the streets of New York in early 1987, two weeks before ACT UP (now an organisation known worldwide and often credited with creating Silence = Death) formed.

Understanding this historical and political context is also helpful when attempting to understand why this symbol has managed to endure. What is it about this simple image which has meant it’s retained significance through the latter half of the 20th Century and into the 21st? The answer seems to be that the release of Silence = Death came at the perfect time – as information was beginning to be shared more easily, but before imagery grew to dictate our daily lives. “Trying to manipulate the world of images now is a much more complicated thing than it was then,” Avram muses. “There were so many things happening at that moment that contributed to the efficacy or the universality of this particular image. It would have been like putting a message in a bottle if we did it this year, on the internet. Getting seen now involves a whole different set of questions.”

There’s also the fact that Silence = Death, surprisingly, has never been copyrighted; it’s still in the public domain and it features in several archives, including MoMA and the Library of Congress. What Avram explains is that, since the very beginning, the poster has existed to be seen by as many people as possible. And copyrighting would limit its use, limiting how many people would see it in turn. Yes, there have been numerous copies over the years but so what? It was yet another stealth gesture. “I was fully conscious of creating a cushion for continued research, historicisation, or conversation around it. It feels amazing to me that we seem to have crafted something that is still resonant across a very broad spectrum of people,” he says. It’s also interesting to consider how keeping the poster in the public domain radically changes its meaning, especially in comparison with symbols like the pride rainbow which has come under more and more scrutiny for its increased commercialisation and adoption by corporations, something many deem an act of virtue signalling. The Pink Triangle, on the other hand, and Silence = Death with it, has retained a certain authenticity. There is no disputing its place in the queer studies landscape and its relevance in furthering such an important cause.

Reflecting on the small but significant decisions Avram and the collective made, we can unpick the relationship between visual culture and activism on a broader scale, and the role of the former in making social change happen. Clearly, imagery has the power to facilitate progress. It’s a sentiment Avram not only agrees with but takes one step further when remarking that design in relation to activism is “essential, I mean we live in an image culture, we’re saturated with images… I think it’s naive to think that you can participate in any way in our culture, without the use of image and text.” Of the six members of the anonymous collective, five of them were art directors, and so incorporating imagery into their work – and taking the time to make sure it was done right – was always paramount. “It was very much the way we were thinking about how to present these very complex social justice and extremely political questions around genocide and homophobia,” he continues, adding that they kept a particular question front of mind: “How would we participate in culture in a way that would advance radical causes or radical set of ideas?”

So what does it feel like to have been involved in the creation of such an iconic piece of culture? “I’m honoured to still be asked about it,” Avram simply responds. “I feel like there seems to be a bottomless pit of inquiry about how this image was crafted and how it functions and how it sustains itself. It seems that there are generations of people discovering it, and thinking of it differently, and I think that will always be true.” And that, as a consciousness-raising project, it is so perfectly, fully functional.