Hardcover issued without a DJ
ISBN:
9780993394812
Tonight Lounge is the culmination of British photographer Lorena Lohr’s decade-long exploration of the American Southwest. Traveling primarily by Greyhound bus, train, and on foot, Lohr bypasses the grandiose myths of the American road trip to focus on the forgotten, transient margins of the landscape. Her subjects are the unglamorous resting stops of the working class and the weary traveler: dive bars, dusty motel rooms, desolate transit lounges, and fading diners. In doing so, the project functions as a melancholic anthropological record of vernacular American architecture and the quiet decay of the mid-century dream.
Shooting on 35mm film, Lohr employs a democratic, highly immediate aesthetic that strips away romantic artifice. The images are distinctly unpopulated, relying instead on the traces left behind by human presence, an empty vinyl booth, a glowing neon sign, or a scuffed linoleum floor. The interplay between her muted, sun-bleached color palette and the harsh, flattening effect of direct flash gives these interiors a profound sense of stillness and alienation. Lohr expertly balances the claustrophobic intimacy of these cheap, windowless rooms with the vast, unseen emptiness of the desert just outside their doors.
Tonight Lounge is the culmination of British photographer Lorena Lohr’s decade-long exploration of the American Southwest. Traveling primarily by Greyhound bus, train, and on foot, Lohr bypasses the grandiose myths of the American road trip to focus on the forgotten, transient margins of the landscape. Her subjects are the unglamorous resting stops of the working class and the weary traveler: dive bars, dusty motel rooms, desolate transit lounges, and fading diners. In doing so, the project functions as a melancholic anthropological record of vernacular American architecture and the quiet decay of the mid-century dream.
Shooting on 35mm film, Lohr employs a democratic, highly immediate aesthetic that strips away romantic artifice. The images are distinctly unpopulated, relying instead on the traces left behind by human presence, an empty vinyl booth, a glowing neon sign, or a scuffed linoleum floor. The interplay between her muted, sun-bleached color palette and the harsh, flattening effect of direct flash gives these interiors a profound sense of stillness and alienation. Lohr expertly balances the claustrophobic intimacy of these cheap, windowless rooms with the vast, unseen emptiness of the desert just outside their doors.