How did the young Truman Capote, a homosexual writer who closeted neither his person nor his writing, succeed amidst the homophobia and censorship of 1948? This paper examines how Capote vaulted himself into celebrity through a campaign of photographic self-representation that climaxed with the spectacular notoriety of the author photo of his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Capote's photographic portraits allowed him both to be recognized as gay and to be seen and discussed as nonspecifically queer—as effeminate, childish, and strange—deviations less threatening than the bald assertion of sexual difference, although associated with homosexuality through the nexus of nonnormative masculinity. Capote thus both deflected and attracted attention to the homosexual contents of his work and person to best serve his career. His media manipulations offer a case study of how gay men could strategically harness the simultaneous currents of fascination and repulsion with nonnormative masculinity in postwar America.