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 20th 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 16th, 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