Behind-the-Scenes of the Sexiest New Book on Your Coffee Table
The idea of shooting beautiful women in various stages of undress in a hotel room is obviously not new, but what makes photographer Aladdin Ishmael‘s new book, My Hotel Room, different – what makes it art – is what he’s able to pull from his subjects. Photos that could easily be tawdry or titillating for titillation’s sake become expressions of identity and power. We let him talk a bit about how he does it.
The idea of this project came about when I was travelling. When you’re travelling by yourself, you end up alone at night. I was looking out my window. It was a beautiful night, and it occurred to me how much I love hotels, and it clicked that I can use this time in between shoots wisely. I called a friend, a big model, and I said, “Hey, what do you think if we do this tonight?” “Let’s do it!” I wanted to combine my passion for hotels with fashion.
I’ve learned there’s a difference between loving the art for yourself and loving the art for someone else. I can sit there and critique a picture, but since this is a personal project for me, I love pictures with an emotional attachment. I love pictures for different reasons: I love pictures for the composition; I love pictures for the colours; I love the picture for the emotion that the girl gave me.
I shot in Hong Kong with a model named Sung. I shot her in the Hooded Hotel. We met in the lobby, and she wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. I hired her based on her looks, but I had never seen her in person. She’s standing right next to me, and she wouldn’t look at me. So I ask the receptionist if my model has arrived, and she says she’s right there. I shake the model’s hand and she barely touches my fingers. And I think I’m screwed. I’m supposed to do a sexy shoot with this girl and she’s really, really shy. God help me. So we went, we changed, we got ready, and I’m trying to figure out a way to break down her boundaries, to make her trust me like all the other models I shoot. But as soon as we got to the room and she put her hair and makeup on, she was a completely different animal. She had confidence that I had never seen before. She owned her body, she owned herself, she owned the whole room.
If you follow sexy, you’re going to end up in the wrong place, because to me, sexuality — and I would say sensuality — has to come from within. It has to vibrate through your body, and if you try to tell somebody to be sexy or try to give them sexy, it always falls short. Everything we have around us should feel a little sexy, even if that’s not exactly the right word.
It’s connection. The connection you have with the light, with the sun, with everything around you. Even when you wash your hands, you know, there’s a connection of washing your hands with the water. I’m always looking for that connection, whether it’s with the model and the camera or the hand of the model with her face or with the dress she’s wearing, whatever.
We have a hotel room, we have a beautiful view, we have a girl, we have clothing, and then they start coming together. And from that coming together you get an emotion, and then you allow the emotion to happen, and the sexiness or the playfulness, it happens by itself. Because we’re all attracted to the same energy, we all came to this place to have fun and to create something beautiful. So everybody is carrying that with them at some level. But most of my pictures aren’t about beauty so much as they’re about the strength of the woman I’m photographing. I like women who love themselves, love what they are, and own themselves. They own their bodies, they own their thoughts. Nobody can take that away from them.
There’s something about the female energy that I really, really love. It’s very sensitive. Emotional. And the emotions women feel get them closer to God. The more out of your logical brain, the more you allow yourself to feel what’s around you, that all makes you greater. I feel like there’s a universe inside every woman.
Photography and Story: Aladdin Ishmael
