Living in the Chelsea Hotel by Linda Troeller

Photographer/author, Linda Troeller has just won 2nd place best books (Other) in the Lucie IPA Awards for Living Inside the Chelsea Hotel, Schiffer, 2015.

The Lucie Awards is the premiere annual event honoring the greatest achievements in photography including lectures and a presentational gala in NYC Oct 23. View her winning IPA Book Photo-Essay with selection of photographs. Click Here

Penelope Green wrote in the New York Times referring to the book as “..her own impressionistic photo memoir.”

Linda moved into the Chelsea Hotel in 1994 where many famous people had left imprints such as Bob Dylan, (now Nobel prize winner who says it was at the Chelsea Hotel the first images of “Sara” /masterpiece “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” was formed in his mind) Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Janis Joplin, Larry Rivers, abstract expressionists and poets passed through or stayed. Linda got to know Ethan Hawke when he was looking for a room on her floor to shoot his film, “Chelsea Walls.”. As a freelance photographer it was great to have his acquaintance and she made a well-known portrait of him. The lobby was the hub activity and the bell hop introduced her to Alexander McQueen and he invited her to shoot his first NYC fashion show in NYC. Linda says the show was so powerful that his vision of texture, space, color changed her photographic color palate. There were many activities, parties, exhibits on various floor and that it seemed to intensify human relations. One evening she was asked to make formal portraits of a couple from England who stayed at the hotel while they were attending Miss Vera’s Cross Dressing School. Troeller shot in the easy ambiance created by longtime Managing Director, Stanley Bard. She began asking tenants to make their portrait and watched for moments of atmospheric light. Her art practice has been influenced by writer, Francine Prose, who suggested to “see into a person’s heart,” at Breadloaf Writer’s Conference and she was guided by photo critic, A.D. Coleman’s dialogues on the the power of “independent testimony.”
Then the board wanted a ‘boutique’ hotel, and acted fast to change, and the hotel was sold in 2011. The front doors were closed for renovations- then eviction notices for her and others. After facing environmental toxic situations, she decided to leave negotiating new owners bought seven of her photographs for the walls of the renovated hotel and give her a goodbye party, “Twenty Years” showing mural size images taken at the hotel. That night she met her publisher’ salesman, Joe Langman, who helped the final book contract.
She has been invited to talk about her book recently at the Griffin Museum, in Boston,
has a room designed with her photographs in homage to the Chelsea Hotel at Lloyd Hotel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and signed books at PhotoNola with a retrospective at
Coup d’loeil Gallery.
“This book is the most important art book about the Chelsea Hotel at the turning from the twentieth to the twenty-first century.” -Kristin Dittrich Festival Founder and Photography Specialist, Germany, 2015 [Official Website]