>COLUMBARIUM CONTINUUM BY RICK CASTRO:2026<
Columbarium Continuum by Rick Castro ⚱️ This exhibition, located in the historic columbarium at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, is a selection of renowned photographer Rick Castro’s most captivating images from 1986—2025.
Featuring Rick’s photographs of Egyptian death masks, portraits of different figures related to Hollywood Forever including trans residents The Goddess Bunny & Holly Woodlawn, as well as intimate photographic portraits of Rick’s loved ones over time.
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“As a 3rd generation Los Angeleno, I’ve always had an affinity with Hollywood Forever. I was a precocious teen who sometimes played hooky to spend the day exploring Hollywood, eventually ending up at what was then still called the Hollywood Cemetery.
During the 70s, it was in a state of disrepair but this only enhanced the gothic atmosphere to which I was drawn. As a young gay man in the 80s, I found myself attending more funerals than my parents. The first plague, AIDS, took numerous friends, including the love of my life, Joey Napierkowski. Death was all around me. I was forced to become a goth.“- Rick Castro, October 4th, 2023.
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“In 1996, I first saw Hollywood Cemetery through Rick’s eyes as I watched his film Hustler White at a Gay Film Festival in St. Louis—featuring the lives of the hustlers & sex workers that worked along Santa Monica Boulevard on a cruising strip that began at the cemetery—with some of the scenes occurring on the grounds.
Two years later, I entered these grounds—unkept, bankrupt, flooded by El Niño—with a sense of deja vu and homecoming. Soon after I bought the cemetery, I encountered Rick and realized that I had first seen my new home through his queer lens.
Over those years I’ve admired Rick’s fearless, queer, punk, passion filled perspective. Now, I also realize Rick captured an art and an aesthetic that came to be when HIV was killing many of us. We were left with no choice but to come out of the closet, into the streets, and force ourselves to not only be seen.. but also saved.
That life & death struggle for visibility and expression forged a fearless art form for those dying & for those who survived.”- Tyler Cassity, owner Hollywood Forever, October 4th, 2023. |
