INSIDE, The Chelsea Hotel Photographed by JULIA CALFEE

Size: 12" x 10", 214 pages
81 large format photos, each with it's own inside story.

The Chelsea Hotel is a place where excess is welcome, where the psyche can be annihilated or resurrected. It has a magical potential for transformation, whether it is rebirth or destruction. Artists such as Mark Twain, Edith Piaf, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jasper Johns, Jack Kerouac, Willem de Kooning, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Ethan Hawke have been drawn INSIDE by a seemingly irresistible magnetic force.

Julia Calfee has lived and photographed in the Chelsea Hotel for four years. "When I photographed at the Chelsea Hotel, I would be staying in a space or situation for hours. Time would pass and my presence would become less and less visible. Sometimes I would even disappear."

"People are always asking me what it's like to live in the Chelsea Hotel. Not always easy. There are times I felt like a fly caught in a spider's web, at risk of being eaten alive if I made the wrong move. This goes with living and working in the same place with a large extended, temperamental family full of artistic sensitivities and colossal egos, with long, exposed nerve ends -- but there were also many moments of friendship, generosity, and complicity."

In an intimate style, INSIDE, the Chelsea Hotel Photographed by JULIA CALFEE documents not only the archetypes and atmosphere in, but also echoes from the spirits and ghosts of, the inimitable Chelsea Hotel. American-born Julia Calfee has spent most of her professional life living and working in Europe. She holds a degree in journalism from NYU and studied art history at the Sorbonne. Her first book, Photogénèse was published by the Joan Miro Foundation in 1995. Her other books include Mountain Spirits of Mongolia (Richard Liu Foundation, 2002), and Spirits and Ghosts: Journeys through Mongolia (PowerHouse Books, 2003). Calfee’s work, including her photo essays on new China, has appeared in INSIDE CHINA, a book published by National Geographic in 2007, and publications worldwide, such as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Business Week, The Sunday Times of London, Paris Match, The Guardian, Elle Italia, Elle Japan, Paris Photo, Digital Photography, Corriere della Sera, foto8 and others, and has been exhibited in museums and galleries in France, the UK, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and the US. Available on Amazon.com