AT SKYLIGHT PRESENTS: RICK CASTRO: S/M BLVD- BOOK TALK & SIGNING
moderator: Zan Romanoff- Journalist Los Angeles Times
Event date:
Between 1986 and 1999, photographer Rick Castro created an archive of portraits using the street hustlers of Santa Monica Boulevard as subjects. Save for individuals he met while traveling in Europe, nearly all of the subjects in this collection were found on a 20-block stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard loosely boundaried by Van Ness Avenue on the east and La Brea Avenue on the west.. Some collaborated with Castro on elaborate bondage scenes. Many he knew just long enough to snap a few frames before they disappeared forever.
S/M BLVD collects 33 images with a foreword by Sam Sweet and a map of central Hollywood. A long-form interview between Castro and Sweet traces the backstories behind each figure. The faces in this book represent the final years of the outdoor tradition, before redevelopment and internet commerce changed the boulevard forever. Together, they form an intimate survey of a Los Angeles subculture widely assumed but scarcely documented.
Lifelong Los Angeleno, Rick Castro is a photographer, writer and filmmaker. Rick has presented S/M Blvd: Street Hustlers Photographs and Remembrances- 1986-1999, (2023, All Night Menu) as a slide show and lecture at the Los Angeles Central Library, 21, February, Los Angeles Times Book Fair, USC, 21, April and Halle am Berghain, 1, June, 2024.
His other books include 13 Years of Bondage: The Photography of Rick Castro, (2004, Fluxion Editions), and CASTRO, (1990, DPR press).
Castro has created photographic portraits of Gore Vidal, Kenneth Anger, and the 14th Dalai Lama, (sipping tea). He’s created fashion editorials for Christian Dior Homme, Cartier, Bottega Veneta and Rick Owens.
On 7, June 2023, Castro’s photographic slide presentation and lecture was featured in Queering the Lens, Getty Center. Castro’s photography & writings were featured in Copy Machine Manifesto: Artists Who Make Zines, Brooklyn Museum, NY, thru 31, March, and is now on exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, through 22, September 2024.
Columbarium Continuum by Rick Castro, is his unique museum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, 9am-4pm daily.
Rick Castro- Patrick- 1990
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