Motels

Motels is a story of self-portraits shot in the US on black and white film. Every photo was printed and hand colored with oil painting. This selection of 20 images is a representative extract of the 50 hand painted photographs of the whole project.

Motels is a story of self-portraits shot in the US on black and white film. Every photo was printed and hand colored with oil painting. This selection of 20 images is a representative extract of the 50 hand painted photographs of the whole project.

Being french, i had never step foot in the US. I joined my boyfriend on his tour and discovered a whole world that I only had seen in movies: the american motels. We crossed the country following the most bizarre itineraries, driving sometimes 10 hours a day, every single day for fifty days. During that time, we had no choice than sleeping in a different bed every night, in the cheapest and more authentic rooms we could find. 

I decided to document every mornings in the motel rooms, instead of the rest of the days, during which i saw the most amazing deserts, forests and yellow to purple mountains. All i was interested in showing was what i could find in the room and what i could do to it with my brushes. A rollercoaster at the window, a light suggesting the burning end of the world or the arrival of an angel behind the glass, the same dresses everyday, flesh, awkwardness, love and loveliness. 

The idea was to show the intimacy, the inside, the silence of this crazy and overwhelming trip. No matter how tired i was, waking up after a few hours of sleep, i had the urge to create a composition with whatever was there in the room, using my body as the common thread of this whole project in the fifty different beds we slept in. With the use of color, i turned the grey and dirty rooms into some disturbing and cherished worlds of my own.