City of the Dead — for Document Journal F/W23. Photographed in late July 2023 in Colma, California — the only town in the world where the dead outnumber the living.
This is an ongoing project, but a chapter of the work was published by
@documentjournal , accompanied by a beautiful written piece by
@dgumbiner
Since a young age, I’ve had what felt like an unreasonable amount of fear around death. I’d lie awake at night imagining darkness, nothingness — as much as my 8 year old mind could attempt to comprehend. Since then, there’s been a lot of death in my small family. I’ve played a big role in being the caretaker, helping to usher my loved ones through the final weeks, days and hours of their lives. Those were among the most profound moments spent together. This project is, in part, exposure therapy for me. This chapter is more topical. Future work will likely involve going into the belly of the beast and witnessing actual post death work. When I shot these images last summer, I witnessed a lot I wasn’t allowed to photograph — there’s understandably privacy and liability issues. The photographs I wasn’t able to capture are still living in my mind.
Colma is nestled into the foothills about 20 minutes south of San Francisco. During the early 1900’s the Bay Area designated Colma as essentially the final resting place for all its citizens, including folks like Wyatt Earp and Levi Strauss. The main industry is death, the second industry is auto sales — an interesting juxtaposition. The images here are a start to something.
Thank you to
@nickvogelson @meganhullander @mark_t_davis @kitfolk - Much gratitude to
@claxtonprojects for talking with me about this project for so so so long.
For the captions, I used the Prestige Elite font bulb on my IBM Selectric II typewriter.
@ibm 
