CARA ANNA finds out the deal with those plastic-covered mattresses.
"LAX Rennaissance Hotel" (AP Photo/HO/DCKT Contemporary/Zoe Crosher)
"LAX Embassy Suites Hotel." (AP Photo/HO/DCKT Contemporary/Zoe Crosher)
"LAX Adventurer Hotel" (AP Photo/HO/DCKT Contemporary/Zoe Crosher)
All it takes is one good idea. Any one of these photos could pass for the random snap of some dozed-out traveler -- "Oh look, a plane." But put them together, all 31, and they become an art project with bicoastal shows and a new book this spring with an introduction by well-known travel writer Pico Iyer.
It took five years, off and on.
Zoe Crosher, a 1997 college graduate, slept and shot in dozens of hotels around Los Angeles International Airport, or LAX, always showing windows and passing planes. Art critics and others have praised her work as a tribute to transience in a famously center-free city.
No wonder Iyer likes it -- he once spent two weeks living in LAX to explore what he called "a kind of placelessness." He saw it as our future.
The only thing that stays in focus in these photos is the plane, Crosher says. But she loves the hotel rooms that creep into her photos, too. And really, so do we.
The rumbling air conditioner. The mirror. The oddly slippery comforter. The ashtray. The remote control. The Bible in the drawer. Everything in its place, except us, every time, no matter how you trash it.
"It's very liberating. There's no history to them, right? Or at least the promise of it," Crosher says.
Travel runs deep for Crosher: She comes from a diplomat father and a stewardess mother. She would like to live in a hotel someday.
Here are a few things she learned from her stays:
--Cheap hotel rooms and expensive ones are more similar than you'd think. (How much can be done with a bed-desk-chair ensemble?)
--Some rooms do whisper a past. Her room at the low-rent Sea Breeze had a phone number written on the wall (she didn't dare call it), and a man kept calling and asking for Muneca, or "doll" in Spanish. In another place, she found a porn magazine ("your basic porn magazine") next to the Bible.
--Watch out for the places with plastic-covered mattresses, or with the bathroom down the hall. And never touch the comforter.
--They charge a $5 deposit for the remote control now. When did that happen?
The best of the hotels around LAX are hidden. The Travelodge is tucked behind a Denny's and a "huge sign with a bear on it," quite ugly from the outside, but inside is the feel of old LA, with a proper pool with palm trees and a reasonable price (about $65).
For a taste of Tijuana, try the Adventurer. International backpackers, free champagne at happy hour, and a general manager with 24 years in the business and a distinct hotel philosophy. "He talked about how these rooms actually function for people: For sex, for escape -- mine is always to escape -- to kill themselves or to do illicit things," Crosher says. She stops, thinking. "God, I'm so bleak."
We called the manager, Chris Christianson, who remembered Crosher well. But while she went on about a hotel room's "comfort of anonymity," he said that's definitely changing. Those days of disappearing, or slipping away for secret romantic encounters? Not so much anymore.
"Credit cards the way they are," he says. "Now everything is so traceable."
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asap contributor Cara Anna always takes the soap.
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