.: average american hotel :.

we went to tahoe this weekend and it was pretty sweet. mounds of snow line the streets to my knees, and even to my waist. trees drip with ice as do motels. the thought of killing someone with an icicle enters my mind briefly. it would be the perfect weapon because it melts. i tell this to my boyfriend who looks at my in amazement. he says he was thinking the same thing. we ride the same psychic wave sometimes it's scary.

we see signs along the way that mean more to us than most to people. we linger and talk about the weird mountain energy. i take a photo of the word 'vent' on the side of a post office box. i think about snowboarding and how that is exactly what we did. vent. vent all of the frustrations that build up in a relationship, in work, in health, in love, in pain. what could be better than snowboarding to vent those toxic strings that bind us. photography, possibly, i don't know. it is a pretty damn close tie between the two.

next we see a sign that says "jp and company" (my boyfriend's initials are jp) and at the top of an evergreen tree, a sign that says 9-11. i am not sure how this ties in but it feels somewhat creepy to me. i saw the planes hit the trade center from 9th and hudson in new york on 9-11. i remember weird things from that day. like lines for the pay phone. which were a few blocks long. 

i look for more signs to steer my attention from that day to the present. i see a woman with her hand in a heil hitler fashion and a tall wooden bear in the same pose. i take a photo of the woman and the light above her glares like a halo on her head. my boyfriends screams, out loud, actually at the top of his lungs, across the lake and through the mountains straight to god, "is jesus a nazi?" we laugh out loud. i stop in the bagel shop to feed my rumbling stomach. i instantly recognize radiohead's ideoteque playing in the background and i look down upon the local tahoe newspaper and the cover says in large black letters 'radio heads'. i am not joking about this. i am being totally real. i know. right? i couldn't believe it. 

this is a series of photographs taken while in tahoe. the first are dyptics in a series of american motels. tahoe is the ideal place for this type of work because it is littered with cheap motels. the neon signs burn inorganically against the darkening sky. it is interesting to capture these monuments for sex and cheap travel. it is so universal because we see motels everywere. it could be in the chill of tahoe winter or the middle of mississippi, hot as dripping sweat. 

okay enough with words, it is time for a visual trip.