CULTURE MONSTER

Photographer Daniel Nicoletta remembers when he met Harvey Milk at the Castro Camera shop in 1974. The young Nicoletta was looking for a place to develop some Super 8 film he had shot for a class when he happened to wander by Milk’s modest camera store in San Francisco.

“He was so friendly and very gentle. Unbeknownst to me, I was being cruised,” Nicoletta recalled. “I was barely out at the time, so I was pretty naive.”

So began a friendship that lasted four years to 1978, when Milk was gunned down at his San Francisco office. During that period, Nicoletta took numerous photographs of Milk, chronicling his transformation from a neighborhood business owner to a politician and advocate for gay rights.

A selection of Nicoletta’s images of Milk is now on view at Overtones Gallery in the exhibition “Harvey Milk and the San Francisco Scene,” through early July. The show also features photographs Nicoletta took on the set of Gus Van Sant’s 2008 biopic “Milk,” starring Sean Penn.

“I was in my 20s when I knew Harvey, and I wasn’t a very good photographer,” said Nicoletta, whose images are also part of the recent book “Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk.” “Fortunately, I made some good mistakes.”

One of those fortuitous mistakes is a 1977 photograph of Milk sharing the daily newspaper comics with his friend Denton Smith. Milk would clip the comic strips from the paper every day and show them to his friends, according to Nicoletta.

“It’s an important photo for me because it shows intimacy between two men. That was a crucial issue for Harvey, and he fought to have public safety for male-to-male bonding,” said the photographer.

Another of Nicoletta’s favorite images in the exhibition is a 1978 photo of a drag queen and his friends seated at a table during a drag ball: “It’s very Diane Arbus. I like it because it shows an old-school queer identity that seems to predate the sexual revolution.”

In early 2008, Nicoletta was invited to be a special on-set photographer for the movie “Milk.” (He had previously worked as a consultant on the movie’s screenplay, written by Lance Dustin Black.) Nicoletta spent 10 weeks on the set, photographing the actors, crew and the crowds of extras.

In the movie, Nicoletta is played by actor Lucas Grabeel (best known for his roles in the “High School Musical” franchise).

“I think he did a great job playing me,” said Nicoletta. “I was quite a theatrical kid back then, and so the role wasn’t easy. But Lucas really rose to the challenge.”

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david.ng@latimes.com

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‘Harvey Milk and the San Francisco Scene’

Where: Overtones, 12703 Venice Blvd., L.A.

When: Noon-6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Ends July 3.

Contact: (310) 915-0346, www.overtonesgallery.com