A hideway for dreams of love and desire
... an internatinal sensation from TASCHEN! Excerpts from Eric Kroll's interview with Chas Ray Krider
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Chas has a clear delineation between his home life and his studio. He stops work in the studio when it gets dark. He then goes home and works on his computer.
CRK: "I don't do any printing here. I don't do any actual work...I only shoot here. I store everything at the residence."
EK: "Is mortality important to you?"
CRK: Yeah. I think about mortality all the time.
EK: "Do you feel your photographs will survive?"
CRK: "Now that I have this thing with TASCHEN. (Benedikt) Taschen is this art vampire. He's going to bite me on the neck and my art is going to have immortality. People ask me if I'm excited about doing the book and I say I'm not really excited. I'm relieved that the work will be seen in a wider world."
EK: "How does your wife, Ellen, feel about your girlie photography?"
CRK: "She's a graphic designer and I met her when she worked for an art magazine. She always knew what I was up to. I think if I wasn't turning it into a career, rather than my total obsession, it might get to be trying...You know you want your art to spill out of the frame and sometimes it gets a little messy." I walk his studio seeing more and more work.
EK: "I get it now. Lots of work. Nonstop. Always shooting. Always creating. How did this pattern evolve into the 'motel' series?"
CRK: "It started about '95. I completely abandoned the art gallery track and decided I was just going to make images that I was personally interested in. Some very sexual images. The thing is, I shoot in a studio and I didn't want to shoot women in the studio with that nebulous nothing body form. It wasn't about form or the body. It was about this context you might encounter a person in. I was very interested in the background. The surface the person is on. I wanted to make images that would be believable as really could possibly happen. So I put it in a context that all viewers are familiar with which is a room that is in a motel. Light and lamps. So the viewers, when they look at my photos, have been there."
EK: "But the images have an earlier era feeling. 1950s and 1960s? Harking back to another time."
CRK: "In a way, yes, because that is the kind of crap I can pick up at thrift stores. I'm not really creating the 1950s. There is nothing in my photos from the 1950s other than the sense of color, some of the lingerie. Most of it as you can see is '70s and bad '80s furniture."
EK: "But nothing is from the new now. Why is that?"
CRK: "Because this is what I can buy cheap."
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Chas has a clear delineation between his home life and his studio. He stops work in the studio when it gets dark. He then goes home and works on his computer.
CRK: "I don't do any printing here. I don't do any actual work...I only shoot here. I store everything at the residence."
EK: "Is mortality important to you?"
CRK: Yeah. I think about mortality all the time.
EK: "Do you feel your photographs will survive?"
CRK: "Now that I have this thing with TASCHEN. (Benedikt) Taschen is this art vampire. He's going to bite me on the neck and my art is going to have immortality. People ask me if I'm excited about doing the book and I say I'm not really excited. I'm relieved that the work will be seen in a wider world."
EK: "How does your wife, Ellen, feel about your girlie photography?"
CRK: "She's a graphic designer and I met her when she worked for an art magazine. She always knew what I was up to. I think if I wasn't turning it into a career, rather than my total obsession, it might get to be trying...You know you want your art to spill out of the frame and sometimes it gets a little messy." I walk his studio seeing more and more work.
EK: "I get it now. Lots of work. Nonstop. Always shooting. Always creating. How did this pattern evolve into the 'motel' series?"
CRK: "It started about '95. I completely abandoned the art gallery track and decided I was just going to make images that I was personally interested in. Some very sexual images. The thing is, I shoot in a studio and I didn't want to shoot women in the studio with that nebulous nothing body form. It wasn't about form or the body. It was about this context you might encounter a person in. I was very interested in the background. The surface the person is on. I wanted to make images that would be believable as really could possibly happen. So I put it in a context that all viewers are familiar with which is a room that is in a motel. Light and lamps. So the viewers, when they look at my photos, have been there."
EK: "But the images have an earlier era feeling. 1950s and 1960s? Harking back to another time."
CRK: "In a way, yes, because that is the kind of crap I can pick up at thrift stores. I'm not really creating the 1950s. There is nothing in my photos from the 1950s other than the sense of color, some of the lingerie. Most of it as you can see is '70s and bad '80s furniture."
EK: "But nothing is from the new now. Why is that?"
CRK: "Because this is what I can buy cheap."
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Motel Fetish
Hardcover, 22.5 x 30 cm (8.9 x 11.8 in.), 280 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
Lustful places, luscious women
Photos: Chas Ray Krider