A short Stay Peter Waterschoot
A short Stay January 10th 2014, nighttime, lying on a bed in a hotelroom with windows wide open midst of winter; the hotel heating going berserk. The heat seemed to be accentuating the dusty smell of red carpet and salmon coloured tapestry even more. Water was sloshing against the building’s walls, as if licking time itself. The need for a breath of fresh air made me lean out of the window. There were lights twinkling across the laguna; distant and still closeby. From 2012 up to 2015 I have repetitively been doing short trips through a changing Europe while following a trail of lesser star hotels which somehow manage(d) to dodge bulldozers, concrete lorries and co. From Venice up to Hamburg I was on a hunt; location hunting for colour, texture and smell. The pictures in this book stand alone, each sampled from reality, but brought together they take the form of a photographic beat poem and every room becomes a stanza. It is about excavating inner time. Getting high on half saddening half exciting feelings, not all too much compelled to go and discover the world outside. Sullenly spending days waiting for nighttime: sit, sleep, eat nearby, drink wine, think, stare, photograph. (PW)
Bottled light from hotels Spilling everything Wet hand from the volcano Sobers your skin” — Anita Lane
“And then there is neither pleasure nor pain but simply darkness yielding before the light” — Capricorn, H. Miller