I always wondered who lived in this type of hotel for single rooms where people could stay from one night to 30 years. I had grown up in Wyoming, in a big house with a lawn and a dog, so it was foreign to me. I decided to move and realized later, when I studied visual anthropology, that what I was doing was “participant observation”. I continued to work like this throughout my career – I was directly involved with my subjects for a long time. I have taken eight years to do a project. Guest registration was relatively quick. I photographed and interviewed 36 people over three weeks. This guy was the Sunday office worker. His dream was to have an ice rink in Pico Rivera, a neighborhood in greater Los Angeles – not a neighborhood that people necessarily aspire to. It wasn’t like, “I’m going to have a clothing store in Beverly Hills.” It was, in a way, the microcosm of the idea that dreams are for all of us. He was very important – one might say, laconic. He was just doing his job and had to get along with people. The sign reads: “No refunds. No pets without manager’s approval.” There were pets of course, and he would know it. It was kind of live and let live. You can see the mail holder in the background: each of these slots represents a person, a life in the hotel I like the design of this photo. It is an example of a problem creating an opportunity. He was behind the glass, so if I had photographed him straight on, I would have been reflected in the shot. I had to move to the right side, which created a whole visual dynamic of angles and lines. I used a Hasselblad, with black and white film. Back then you could take a Polaroid to know you were on the right track with your lighting and design. Once I was satisfied, I would do between 12 and 24 images. The work was well received and made the rounds of New York publishing houses. The art departments always wanted to publish it, but the beanbaggers were like, “Who’s going to buy this book?” This went on for decades. I was showing it to people and it got me a lot of work in Hollywood and it did great things for me, but it didn’t get published. Then I kind of forgot about it until 2018, when I showed the photos at the Photography Master Retreat in France, and everyone said, “This is great. You have to do something about it.” The pandemic gave me time to prepare it for publication. The Guest Register is a book of goals and dreams, some achieved and some not achieved. You can see the mail holder in the background of this picture: each of these slots represents a person, a life in the hotel. Many found a way of life that could bring them peace. Some would be over 100 if they were alive today. But there are others who were my age or younger, so I’m really excited to see if anyone comes forward once the book is published. I consider this my magnum opus. We are at our most intelligent in our early 20s. I think we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to that age of enlightenment. The hotel taught me many things that I have carried to this day. It gave me the confidence and will to continue being this crazy thing called a photographer. Guest Register by Penny Wolin is published by Crazy Woman Creek Press. More information at pennywolin.com Penny Wallin. Photo: Penny Wolin
Penny Wolin’s Biography
Born: Cheyenne, Wyoming, 1953 Educated: ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. MA in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Film Directing at the American Film Institute, Los Angeles. Influences: “Diane Arbus, Arnold Newman, Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange. I’ve had their books from my early career and they’re dogged and worn.” Highlight: “The 1992 solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution, Museum of American History, The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe of the Diaspora, plus a Life The magazine commissioned to photograph a monk building a monastery of contemplation and silence in the middle of a field of Nebraska corn.’ Wrong. Cameras don’t take great pictures. Photographers do it!” Top tip: “As the great portrait photographer Arnold Newman said: ‘Photography is 2% inspiration and 98% moving furniture.’ Move the furniture. Make pictures of what you understand or want to understand. Give yourself tasks with fixed deadlines. Shoot, edit, edit, print, repeat.”
