Motel 42 is a series of self-portraits taken in the United States on black-and-white film by Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon. Each photo was printed and then colored with oil paint. Eloïse joined her musician partner on a tour in the United States and discovered a world she had only seen in movies: American motels. The photographer wanted to document the 42 rooms they stayed in, morning after morning. All she wished to show was what she could find in these rooms and what she could then create with her brushes.
The idea behind this project was to show the intimacy, the interior, the silence of this transformative journey. Eloïse created pictorial compositions, using her body as a common thread while capturing the soul of each space: a roller coaster at the window, a light suggesting an apocalyptic fire or the arrival of an angel behind a window, skin, love, and loneliness. By using color, she transformed these gray and dirty rooms into strange and precious worlds.
