Lonesome hotel #03 – Private dancer

For years, I have been making self-portraits in hotel rooms.

What draws me to these spaces is difficult to explain. Hotel rooms are anonymous stages; temporary shelters occupied by countless strangers before me. People arrive, sleep, work, make love, argue, celebrate, grieve, and leave. Most of those stories remain untold. The rooms keep their secrets.

When I photograph myself in these spaces, it often feels like dancing.

Not because I’m a real dancer, but because dancers tell stories with their bodies. They express things that are difficult to put into words. In a similar way, I use my body as a language. The camera records gestures rather than sentences.

Each hotel room becomes a stage on which I perform for the camera alone. I become a private dancer in a place designed for transience and am adding my own brief presence to a long chain of anonymous visitors. Most of them probably had no desire whatsoever to leave a trace behind. Their performances remained private.

Then I arrive and do the exact opposite.

There is also the question of balance.

I climb onto furniture, balance on narrow ledges, squeeze myself into corners, hang from doorframes. Sometimes the balancing is metaphorical. Sometimes it is very real. There have been moments when I was standing on a window sill on the tenth floor thinking that perhaps this self-portrait wasn’t such a good idea after all. Yet those moments often produce the images I like best.

A body searching for balance in places that were never meant to feel like home. A silent dance on a stage that belongs to nobody and everybody at the same time.

By the next morning, I’ll check out and leave.

The room will be anonymous again.

Only the photograph remains.

Hidden from view, sometimes for years.

Until I decide otherwise, it remains my own private dance.

Below, I’m sharing an exclusive photo from this experience that I only share with my paid subscribers. If you’d like to see them and support my work, you can unlock this post right here.