Here is an interesting write up by Pilar Viladas of the New York Times Magazine on Ian Schrager’s latest endeavor, the Public Hotel in Chicago. Her article is accompanied by some of my pictures I have taken for the hotel. I am now in my 12th year taking pictures of Ian Schrager’s projects, and I will always remember my very first shoot, which was the model room of the Hudson Hotel in NY. I have probably photographed several hundred hotel rooms by now, and can say that that particular shoot, my first big shoot for him, and as “luck” had it, of this tiny room with dark wood panelled walls, in the pre-digital era, when I was still shooting 4×5″ on chrome and everything had to be lit, exposed & filtered perfectly, was more stressful and felt technically more challenging than almost anything I have ever done since.
For anyone interested in a visual of this little anecdote, I found this link on the web. The image on the left is a crop of my picture from 12 years ago.