Vincent van Gogh observed, “Art is to console those who are broken by life” — a sentiment befitting the struggles of the current moment, as people attempt to establish an approximation of normalcy while the pandemic continues to rage. For photographer Rick Castro — better known as “The Fetish King” — art has provided sustenance and stability during this devastating time that hit him hard when Los Angeles went into lockdown in March 2020.
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As businesses shuttered, people panic-shopped and store shelves were left bare; searching for some semblance of understanding, Rick began perusing the web from the safety of his East Hollywood home. “I would go on the newly formed COVID map, and there were cases surrounding me,” Rick says. “I felt like I was living in that Vincent Price movie, The Last Man on Earth, which became I Am Legend. I felt like that was going to be our destination — the final result.”
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For many, 2020 was a period of collapse, of endings both literal and figurative. “I had no work,” recalls Rick, who had been organising a career retrospective at a Chinatown gallery that soon closed permanently. “In a week, everything I was working on that year came to an end. I applied for assistance and got turned down for most things; the few I got kept me going, but there was a time where I felt like I was going to lose my home.”
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Feeling trapped, Rick knew he needed to escape. He headed to a little cabin that his father built in the late 1960s on a 2.5-acre property in the high desert of San Bernardino County. “It was in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “It was very bare-bones: no air conditioning and no central heat. There was no wifi. I had to use my cell phone as a modem, but that ran out way too quickly. I was really in seclusion, but I loved it. It gave me respite to relax and repair. I immersed myself in writing a daily journal on my blog that I called The Plague Diary: This Is How the World Will End.”
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