Photographs from California’s ‘City of the Dead’

Colma is a town just south of San Francisco, between the airport and the city. Surprisingly, many of the people who live there that I’ve talked to never really stop to think twice about the fact that there are nearly two million people buried in this tiny town, which spans about two miles from one side to the other. The city is a necropolis, a literal “city of the dead”.

When I got off the Bay Area Rapid Transit in Colma for the first time, it was pitch black out. My friend Tom and I wanted to kick off our time in the necropolis by shooting photos of the sunrise. I’d read stories about the town and its abundance of gravestones and cemeteries. What I didn’t realise was that there are gravestones everywhere, including the medians of the streets and out in front of shopping strip malls. What we were greeted with when we got off the train was just about as quirky and bizarre as we anticipated. Smiles were the norm. People were super friendly and really happy to talk about their cemeteries, which they referred to as their city’s parks. They referred to the dead buried in Colma as their neighbours and wouldn’t stop joking about how quiet and pleasant they are. 

It’s a weird combination of the suburban American dream and the common American horror story, with a heavy dose of capitalism thrown in the mix. Founded in 1924 as the largest necropolis in the country, the town’s entire socio-economic and cultural heartbeat lies in burying and maintaining dead bodies. Turns out this isn’t a bad living, considering people don’t and won’t ever stop dying. There is no shortage of business for the cemetery owners and monument builders. In 2010, the population of Colma was marked at just shy of 1,800 people. With nearly two million bodies buried in two square miles, the dead outnumber the living 1,000 to one. I came to find out during my time there that despite this alarming ratio, the people who basically live in a giant cemetery are really happy and life in Colma is pretty normal. 

Eric Arthur Fernandez is a photographer living and working in Brooklyn, NY. More of his work can be seen here. Also, check out his Tumblr and Twitter. 

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