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Love Hotel
Love hotels in South Korea are commonly known to be where lovers go to carry on secret affairs. I was given access to photograph the rooms of a love hotel in Seoul after couples had checked out and before the rooms had been cleaned. Korean culture has many rules and formalities that have always felt very restrictive to me, so I was intrigued by the idea of being where I shouldn’t be and observing things I shouldn’t be observing-remnants of love affairs that were presumably forbidden as well. By visiting the rooms just moments after they had been vacated, I wanted to explore residual tension between the presence and absence of the anonymous couples, and to contemplate the stories implied by what remained. Rather than consider the rooms as a whole I focus on the bed, treating it as a metaphor for love and nostalgia.
Photographs: Grace Kim
Website: grace-kim.com
“…you’re SO hungover…” profread proofread proofread, dammit!!!
grace
i like this series for a number of reasons, and can see different contexts for use which would suit the work..
hotel rooms are clinical and vacuous places to me, having spent many years trawling between them. devoid of character, their plastic charms and feux comfort denied me the only pint of interest i ever found in them – who was here last and what did they do?
my ritual would always begin with a pint of beer and a bath.. set up the laptop and some music to feel like home – i´m more a fan of a living room couch or even a floor than a hotel room.
but i have left some states behind me.. which i am glad no one could record.
having only skimmed the comments lightly it seems to be a contentious series, which i guess is about right.. it could seem dull.. to a dull mind.. although to any other it MUST hold interest.. photographic concept is strong regardless of technique.. although i would have loved to see it in all it´s seedy colourful beauty.
thanks muchly
david
Jim
Attack you for where you live? Nah, I´m jealous of your address. I just thought it was amazing how you spend all day and night in here passing unnecessarily harsh judgements on anybody´s work that isn´t your glass of iced tea and being petted and cooed at by those whose feelings you´re trampling like so many cow turds. I was wondering if you were the head of photography at MOMA or something. Surely somebody this intolerant, this cryptic, this harsh, this indifferent to the feelings of others MUST be breathing some really rarefied air. Someone so accomplished, with such stature that I should shake in my flip-flops to be allowed to post in the same thread. And what do i find out? That you´re just a guy in Tyler County, Texas with a fridge full of long-necks. Woo-hoo. It was a pretty funny joke on me. Suddenly, like the Wizard of Oz you shrank way, way down in stature to a far more manageable level. Do i still think you´re a mean SOB? Yup. But i´m betting your bark is worse than your bite. At most, you´re like a Maytag washer. Constantly agitating.
By the way, if i recall correctly S.E. Texas was considered actually more southern than texan and in this part of Texas land is called a farm not a ranch. Regardless, a ranch is a better fit for your internet persona. Ride ´em cowboy!
yes! I do approach these photographs as a visual poem. I look at the pillows, blankets, etc.. as characters in a sense, mimicking an imagined, poetic dialog between the lovers, and myself sometimes included.
hi ludmilla, where are you from? I am very curious what love hotels are like in your country, and how that relates to broader cultural attitudes in general. they are so different from culture to culture although at their core they are all the same. the series isn’t complete so you are right to feel this way, it’s an ongoing exploration that I have been working on since last year. if you or anyone else is interested in seeing the most recent edit, please check out http://grace-kim.com/lovehotel_01.html. would love to know what you think. thank you for sharing!
grace,
i love this project. every time i come on here i fond something new. so nice and refreshing. what i like about this is the nice tight edit and good strong images. there are also so many directions you could have gone in with this project… but you went with a simple, intimate and ultimately what i think to be the strongest approach to this. it is a very interesting portrait and i cannot stop going back… very nice.
AUGUST…
now you have taken my comment “let down by the time you are 40″ totally out of context!!! i was talking about the newspaper work ethic, not any kind of comment or philosophy you may have..actually, i suspect that the two of us would disagree on very little…
cheers, david
Hello Grace,
I am from Brazil.
And to appease some of your curiosity, I found a link with photographs of Love Hotels in my hometown. Even though there is no translation on the site, I am sure you will be able to navigate it without any major complications… Dreams Motel
Thanks for sharing the link of your most recent edit… I really enjoy it, and am a believer that this project can reach a certain remarkable magnitude. Keep up the good work!
David. that last comment is a bit patronising no? dull to a dull mind? Your opinion dude. the CONCEPT surely is interesting, to me at least, and while I absolutely agree with what grace is doing with this, I find the pictures kind of dull[in so much as they do not yet live up to the concept they represent, and are , to me, mainly plain], And I can Assure you I am called many things, but dull aint usually one of them. Calling Absolutes based on our own tastes is always a recipe for disaster in my book, and we should all, rightly , be called on it. Opinion is one thing and we all have one of those up our sleeves, but it aint usually fact.
PEACE
john
having only skim read the comments there was no personal offence intended john, and of course it is only my opinion thats it COULD seem dull..
hey david. None intended either, or taken.
John
Thanks for the insight Grace. Yours and Kyunghee Lee’s work is really the only example of Eastern (Oriental) work that I have seen. As David mentioned once, it is very different for the more reality-based photographs that we are used to in the West. I had to look more than once at both essays before I “got it” but it was well worth the effort. Thank you for helping to expand my visual horizon.
Best wishes,
Mike.
thank you ludmilla! for your support and also for this link which is very interesting. the site reminds me very much of korean love hotels.
Morro All,
Am I right when I say that as professional or yet non professional photographer one is surely inspired by the imaginative, daring, creative (to not use the word “arty”)attempts and accomplishments of other visual artists, musicians, dancers etc and that it doesn’t matter at the end whether those bought a ranch, or cut off their ear in frustration? Which ever way, if it’s only the paycheck that makes ones’ creative juices flowing, someone else’s truth gets spoken.
What will have been a highly creative and influential carreer to one photographer might have meant a mundane cut-my-pulse-job to someone else. We all set our own standards. And that’s necessary.
Hat off not only to them who survive within the industry, but to those who aspire entering it. Two hats off to those who go the extra mile finding and speaking their truth, especially if it means financing personal projects themselves. David, all hats and shoes off for what you’re doing for others. Thank you very much for that
. Herb
love the concept of the love hotel…
refreshing. unusual…
the shards of light.
pillows strewn..
sheets crumpled and pushed aside with a life of their own
stark but evocative..
someone said poetry… i’d have to agree
I am denumbed seeing these pictures.What beautiful,original idea is,and the photographes are telling the stories of light & shade depicting fulfilment & despair.
Grace,
Clearly the pictures evoke thoughts of ‘what happened here’? Were these affairs only extra-marital, illegal, perhaps even hidden or forbidden? I have not been to Korea, but I here that there are many strict rules for public conduct and that the rules are left behind when in secret.
Some of the comments are unnecessarily harsh and even unfair. But, art is valued by those who view it and allow themselves to be open to it’s message. I don’t see your pictures as this or that, but allow them to reflect my minds imagination of what I might be if I were in the frame at that moment in time.
Thank you for sharing this insight that you have.
Neil