Colin Miller spent four years photographing the apartments of New York's bohemian Mecca the Chelsea Hotel. The fruits of his labor have been collected in a new book, Hotel Chelsea: Living in the Last Bohemian Haven, from The Monacelli Press. Miller and writer Ray Mock document the amazing apartments and lives of some two dozen current residents.
The living room of former model and NY scenester, Man Laï.
The bedroom of event producer Susanne Bartsch.
In this book, photographer Colin Miller and writer Ray Mock intimately portray the enduring bohemian spirit of the Chelsea Hotel through interviews with nearly two dozen current residents and richly detailed photographs of their unique spaces. As documented in Miller's abundant photographs, these apartments project the quirky decorating sensibilities of urban aesthetes who largely work in film, theater, and the visual arts, resulting in deliriously ornamental spaces with a kitschy edge. Weathering the overall homogenization of New York and the rapid transformation of the hotel itself—amid recent ownership changeovers and tenant lawsuits—residents remain in about seventy apartments while the rest of the units are converted to rentals (and revert to a hotel-stay basis, which had ceased in 2011).
The opening image is of photographer Tony Notarberardino’s Hotel Chelsea bedroom.
More images and details can be found in this New York Times gallery article.
[Photo credit: All photos © Colin Miller/Courtesy of The Monacelli Press. Used with permission.]
