Hotel Lobby (Lourdes)
Hotel Lobby (Lourdes) is one of a series of works dealing with the subject of Tourism. Influenced by photography and film yet executed from life, the images in the series often focus on transition spaces like hotel bedrooms and lobbies, spaces designed to offer temporary insulation from the unforeseen and the unfamiliar. Representing neither arrival or departure, these spaces symbolize the ‘pause’ before travellers continue on their journey to the next stopping point.
The works often explore the more unsavoury aspects of the industry, analyzing the extent to which, in a place like Lourdes (a pilgrim and tourist destination), with its Vatican approved neon lit shops and countless hotels which surround the church, shrines are manipulated by the industry for modern consumption.
Interesting parallels can be drawn between pilgrims and contemporary tourists though, who in their own ways, engage in worship of shrines which are sacred, albeit in different ways and, as result, gain some kind of uplifting experience.
In the image, the chairs themselves can be seen as ambiguous symbols; as images of despair in that their function implies disability or as symbols of elation in that they are empty.
The works often explore the more unsavoury aspects of the industry, analyzing the extent to which, in a place like Lourdes (a pilgrim and tourist destination), with its Vatican approved neon lit shops and countless hotels which surround the church, shrines are manipulated by the industry for modern consumption.
Interesting parallels can be drawn between pilgrims and contemporary tourists though, who in their own ways, engage in worship of shrines which are sacred, albeit in different ways and, as result, gain some kind of uplifting experience.
In the image, the chairs themselves can be seen as ambiguous symbols; as images of despair in that their function implies disability or as symbols of elation in that they are empty.
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