Farewell at the Motel

This seems like a hotel room in a city. But the photograph of this small room pulls me toward a remote place from road trip photos and films—somewhere where there’s no room to stand; just the car and the road, travel and leaving home, intimacy and violence, and in the end, either finding oneself or death.

Though two beds are pushed together, though two flowers rest on the pillows to welcome the arrival of two people, I don’t know why this picture speaks to me only of loneliness. These vertical pillows resemble coffins more than anything else. I keep asking myself whether it is the taste of the lady or gentleman who tidied and cleaned the room to make the flowers stand out more against the whiteness, or if it’s meant to say that the place where the heads rest is clean, and the ever-present, somewhat unpleasant scent of pillow dry cleaning lingers in the air.

The lonely eyes of the photographer from above, combined with the cramped space and the light caught between two shadows, seems to intensify the sense of death. Although the marks of many sleeping bodies rest on these mattresses, and though I see the efforts of that lady’s or gentleman’s hands, I keep telling myself this isn’t a motel room, this isn’t where the photographer enters a guesthouse—this is a place of farewell. It’s time to leave. The photographer seems to be standing over those two who aren’t there, to say goodbye, leave the room, and to continue on the road.