Rick Castro’s intimate portraits of love and remembrance

Nes­tled in the heart of Hol­ly­wood amidst the gen­tle cacoph­o­ny of every­day life lies the final rest­ing place of gang­sters, tycoons, glam­our queens, and sil­ver screen stars includ­ing Rudolph Valenti­no, Judy Gar­land, Cecil B. DeMille, and Bugsy Siegel. Built in 1899, Hol­ly­wood Memo­r­i­al Park fell to ruin mid-cen­tu­ry when for­mer own­er Jules Roth cheat­ed the endow­ment while he trav­elled the world by yacht.

By the mid-1970s, the 62-acre ceme­tery had fall­en into hard times, and became a local teen hang out. ​“It had that haunt­ed Goth­ic look and attract­ed all the punks and future goths,” says pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rick Cas­tro who hung out at the park as a teen. In the sum­mer of 1995, Cas­tro returned to his high school stomp­ing grounds with col­lab­o­ra­tor Bruce LaBruce to stage an unfor­get­table guer­ril­la shoot for their 1996 fea­ture film, Hus­tler White. 

Soon there­after, Cas­tro learned it had been sold to a new own­er, Tyler Cas­si­ty, who first learned of the ceme­tery while watch­ing Hus­tler White at a queer film fes­ti­val in St. Louis. Hail­ing from a fam­i­ly of mor­ti­cians, Cas­si­ty saw the future writ­ten in the past, and set forth on a jour­ney to restore these sacred grounds to their for­mer glo­ry while bring­ing it into the new cen­tu­ry as Hol­ly­wood For­ev­er.

Since tak­ing the helm Cas­si­ty has trans­formed Hol­ly­wood For­ev­er into a space for com­mu­ni­ty and com­mu­nion with a wealth of film screen­ings, live music, per­for­mances, yoga, and art events, as well as the tra­di­tion­al funer­ary fare. But per­haps among Hol­ly­wood Forever’s most cher­ished trea­sures is Colum­bar­i­um Con­tin­u­um by Rick Cas­tro, an ongo­ing exhi­bi­tion of pho­tographs made from 1986 – 2024, dis­played inside the two-sto­ry art nou­veau colum­bar­i­um where the cre­mat­ed remains are stored inside niches. 

Amidst the ash­es of icon­o­clasts like Toma­ta Du Plen­ty, lead singer of the sem­i­nal LA punk band, the Scream­ers, and goth leg­end Rozz Williams of Chris­t­ian Death, lies Castro’s own death mask, mark­ing what will even­tu­al­ly be his final rest­ing place. 

“I had that com­mis­sioned by artist Asa Fox when I had Ante­bel­lum Gallery. It’s a very old fash­ioned thing to do. Not many peo­ple have had them done,” Cas­tro says, point­ing to lumi­nar­ies like William Shake­speare, Lud­wig van Beethoven, Napoleon Bona­parte, and Leo Tolstoy.

Colum­bar­i­um Con­tin­u­um also includes Castro’s por­traits of The God­dess Bun­ny and Hol­ly Wood­lawn, two of Hol­ly­wood Forever’s most icon­ic trans res­i­dents. ​“I call it a unique muse­um, and unof­fi­cial­ly con­sid­er it a queer space,” he says. ​“It is impor­tant to make sure that a place as main­stream as a ceme­tery includes a queer identity.”

Cas­tro notes the long­stand­ing prac­tice of seg­re­ga­tion that has shaped the land­scape of every aspect of Amer­i­can necrop­ol­i­tics through­out the 20^th cen­tu­ry, be it across gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, race, eth­nic­i­ty, or creed. No less than Jules Roth him­self denied Hat­tie McDaniels, who won an Acad­e­my Award for her per­for­mance in Gone With the Wind, her wish to be interred on the grounds. Cas­si­ty made up for this atroc­i­ty by cre­at­ing a ceno­taph to Queen McDaniels in 1999.

With the first anniver­sary of the Colum­bar­i­um Con­tin­u­um approach­ing this fall, Cas­tro shot fash­ion house Bot­te­ga Vene­ta col­lec­tion to cre­ate a mov­ing med­i­ta­tion love, melan­choly, and remem­brance, craft­ing inti­mate scenes of beau­ty and repose that stand as a gen­tle reminder of the peace­ful coex­is­tence between life and death.

Colum­bar­i­um Con­tin­u­um by Rick Cas­tro is free and open to the pub­lic every day between 9am-4pm inside the his­toric colum­bar­i­um of Hol­ly­wood For­ev­er Ceme­tery 6000 San­ta Mon­i­ca Blvd, Hol­ly­wood CA 90028.

On Octo­ber 16^th, 2024, Rick Cas­tro and Hol­ly­wood For­ev­er will host the ded­i­ca­tion to Oscar Wilde’s ceno­taph niche fea­tur­ing Castro’s pho­to­graph of Wilde’s tomb at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise and an oil por­trait of Oscar cre­at­ed by artist Rik­ki Niehaus. Tick­ets: antebellum@​earthlink.​net

Head­er Pho­to: Rick Cas­tro’s pho­to­graph of Wilde’s tomb at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Mod­el: Logan Youel, Styl­ist: Yashua Sim­mons, Hair & groom­ing~ Mr.Sarah, Cloth­ing: Bot­te­ga Veneta