Chas Ray Krider. In the photographic world, his name is legend. And quite rightly. Who else but Chas Ray Krider can create an entire world - an entire landscape - merely with the click of a shutter? One moment comfortably kitsch, the next sexily sinister, Krider's photographic universe is one of endless highways, cheap motels, and the best looking dames this side of 1960. Stylishly filmic, Krider's work is pregnant with narrative - but whose story is it? Ours? His? The girl in the red stilettos, or her ever invisible companion?

Let this interview serve as cocktail in the tiki bar of Krider's wonderful imagination; the main attraction - his new book, Motel Fetish, published by Taschen and edited by his friend and self-proclaimed pupil, Eric Kroll.

As fun as he is talented, Amanda cyberly caught-up with Chas Ray, who kindly pulled himself away from his beautiful models (and even more beautiful wife, Ellen) to answer those questions which every tourist needs to know.

Dial 9 for reception.....

KIU What's you favourite 'motel moment' from a film?

CRK I cannot readily recall a favorite motel moment from a film. I do like the various motel scenes in David Lynch's Wild at Heart. Although those scenes are more sinister than my portrayal of motels, I like the room in which Sailor and Lula are staying, especially the western horse lamp beside the bed.

KIU Have you ever had any strange and/or near-death experiences in a motel?

CRK All encounters in motels are strange. An atmosphere of strangeness is one element that I cultivate in the Motel work. I find this kind experience a relief from the mundane. I have not had near-death experience in a motel.
I did photograph a woman in the LA motel where Janis Joplin OD'd. That is near-death enough for me.

KIU Chas, I once had to take a module in the History of Photography for my Art History BA and wrote my term paper on Diane Arbus. Whilst I think she was quite good (and did a lot of motel interiors), her photographs were essentially self-referential (or at least that's what my argument was.) In your piccies, there is a striking lack of 'you'. Is this just modesty, or is it something you strive for?

CRK I am uncertain as to what I am striving for sometimes. In Motel Fetish I have set up a narrative structure within a set of perimeters. One presupposition is that there are two people in that motel room, the woman and an unseen other. What is her motive for assuming these poses? It's for her and the other's mutual pleasure. In order to give the viewer of the book a greater sense of involvement 'through their projection of self into the image' I have to leave myself out.

KIU Chas, you've made a CD to accompany Motel Fetish. Tell us about this, please (we like music!)

CRK For many years I have felt my images should have music to accompany their viewing. In the past I have programmed music to play during exhibitions on my work. In film, music helps establish the emotion the director is attempting to elicit. I wanted to make Motel Fetish an immersive experience, a book with a soundtrack. The book can be seen as a film made one frame at a time or as a story board on which a film could be based. The CD Motelesque is a movie for the ear, a faux soundtrack suggesting scenes from a movie. Bring the images together with music and let your imagination provide the story.

Motelesque is original music written and performed by friends. Since I am not a musician, the compositions are their creations. I acted as director, shaping the final tracks suggesting the pacing and the mix. I was attempting to get a soundtrack that would evoked a particular set of emotional responses.

The CD has 9 instrumental tracks with ambient sound, voice (Italian, French, English and Japanese) and dialogue appropriated from movies. The CD comes with a 16-page booklet of exclusive Motel images. Motelesque is available though my Website, www.motelfetish.com. In the future I hope to produce Motelesque Vol.2 and perhaps Vol.3. I am looking for musical contributors for these future projects.

KIU Have you ever thought of doing an English version of your book (Bed and Breakfast Fetish)? And if you ever consider such a project, could Amanda feature in it, please?

CRK It would be fun to take Motel Fetish on tour, photographing in many different settings. What interests me in the Motel work is photographing an environment that is common to many viewer's experiences, and that environment is the rented room. I happen to shoot in motels because it is a place common to the American experience. I want believability in the scenes depicted in my photographs. When the viewer is familiar with the space in which the photo events are happening, they are more willing to suspend belief. I could easily shoot in a bed-and-breakfast as a well as a motel, but it would be a slightly different movie. Which is OK with me.

Could Amanda of KIU be featured in the Bed and Breakfast Fetish series?

Yes she could. I'd call it “Bed and No Breakfast”.

The most important quality I am looking for in a model is a willingness to take chance, enter into an open-ended situation. In a model this is what I call the “right attitude”. Since my work is not concerned with glamour, I prefer real people, all one needs is the willingness and the nerve to work with me.

KIU What makes a woman sexy?

CRK There is so much variety in sexy. We all have our personal preference. I think we gravitate towards our personal archetype, consciously or otherwise. I know I do, especially after 5 years in Motel Fetish I know my archetype. In the Motel work I am open to talking and working anyone. There is no perfect physical being. I have found that everyone has some strong sexy feature. I try to build photos around that. I want the women in my photos to look good, especially to themselves. The sexiest woman is the one that can project her inner sensuality, which can transform the exterior.

KIU What's your favourite bit in Oliver?

CRK I confess not to have seen the film Oliver in its entirety. I am very square in that I like musicals, especially those of the 1950's. I can watch Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby singing Cole Porter in High Society, over and over.

KIU There is something very filmic about your images. Do you have an internal narrative going on when you start snapping?

CRK Motel Fetish is a conceptual narrative. I have a movie running in my head. A man looking for something, going from room to room trying to find it in encounters with various women. With that mind set, there is a certain arc when I am shooting. A beginning, establishing the woman in the room, we are moving towards an unknown ending. In between hopefully there will be a revelation, a interesting image. My photographs often appear to be stills lifted from a movie, with a sense of action impending or arrested.

KIU Chas, chocolate or strawberry?

CRK There's a time for chocolate and a time for strawberry. I go with chocolate for ice cream, strawberry for jam.

KIU Do you consider photography as High Art, Medium Art, Low Art, Pop Art, Baroque, Rococo, International Gothic... or something all it's own?

CRK Photography is whatever the artist makes it. When I started Motel Fetish I didn't call it anything. I wasn't thinking in terms of “art”. I wanted to make images that had a meaning to me with out concern for audience in terms of “is it art?”

KIU What's your favourite motel? (And why?)

CRK The name of a motel is often much better than the motel itself. The rooms are all much the same, but the name and the signage have the power to suggest possibilities... The Bambi, The Rawhide, The Homestead, and my favorite name of some unexplainable reason is Motel Evelyn. What I'm looking for in a room is color, simple forms. Most older motels are remolded from time to time, with many being remodel in the 80's. Now most of them have been drained of color, of life. Its a disappearing world.

KIU How do you find your wonderful models?

CRK I use friends and acquaintances. I rarely approach women I don't know. If I meet someone whom I think I would like to work with I try to get a mutual 3rd party to intercede for me, expressing my interest and setting up an introduction. This not the most effective way to acquire models but it gives everyone latitude to move in the direction they wish. I believe in letting people escape.

KIU Speaking of your models, they all tend to be tall, slim and beautiful Americans. Have you ever considered using shortish, curvy, English ones?

CRK No, I disagree. There are more body types in the total range of my work than you see on my Website. Hopefully you will see non-stereotypical types in the Motel Fetish book. The majority of the people I work with are not professional, but real people. I do my best to make them look good. I play to their strongest feature.

Those who appear in my photos are by chance. Who will truly want to do it and commit? I find there are two issues with everyone. One: how do they feel about their bodies, and two: how much of it are they willing to expose? The individual's feeling on these issues has a bearing on who appears and how far will they go. I donšt select types, they select themselves.

Send me a shortish, curvy, English woman, who's willing to allow me to photograph her. If she is comfortable with the situation, there is a very good chance something interesting will come from it.

KIU Who is the one woman you would love to register into Motel Fetish (she can be dead or alive, by the way)?

CRK There are several women who I have worked with in the past that I would very much like to have the opportunity to encounter again in the Motel. I don't think about the beautiful celebrity or the famous, glamour types who I cannot possibly know. I save my imagination for my creative process. I prefer the real women I know.

KIU People of all genders and orientations love your work. Do you think this is because the atmospheric beauty of your piccies transcends sexual titillation? (Or do you think it's something else?)

CRK I believe you have partly answered your own question. Yes it is the atmosphere and the environment in which the figure appears. I am trying to seduce the viewer with color and form as well the sexy content. If my images were only about sexual titillation, that would be too one-dimensional. I am concerned, when making an image, with form, light and color. All used for a psychological effect. The key-elements for me are the emotional and psychological tensions within the frame. I often use provocative and explicit poses, but there must be some level of mystery, some veiling and use of shadow for poetic effect. My images are open and often ambiguous to allow the view to arrive at their own interpretation.

KIU Chas, which did you prefer? 'Gladiator' or 'Titanic'. (WARNING: There is a 'correct answer' to this one, so please think carefully before answering.)

CRK If you are referring to the two movies, I confess not to have seen either. I don't see a lot of current films for several reasons, mainly, most Hollywood films are so bad. I don't need the movie as entertainment, but for a intelligent meaningful experience. I see few films because I work day and night. I think my own life is more interesting than what Hollywood offers. Motel Fetish could make an interesting movie. I've written a film treatment. Big surprise... it's about a photographer!

As for 'Gladiator' or 'Titanic', my only impression of them is from the Media. It seemed 'Titanic' was a big Hollywood movie designed to manipulate romantic sentiments in young girls, with enough special effects for the lads. What adults got out of it I don't know. As for 'Gladiator', if I was on a transatlantic flight and had to choose either a Roman epic or the Big Boat movie, I'd go for the brutish guys.

The most recent film I have seen was “Secretary.”

KIU If you could have tea with anyone in the world (living or dead) who would it be, and where would you have it?

CRK I would want to have coffee or, if later in the day, cocktails with one of my friends and confidants rather than select a historical or celebrated person. Although I would like to have coffee with David Lynch at Bob's Big Boy.

KIU What's your all-time favourite film? (Mine's 'Waiting for Guffman', by the way. Oh. And also 'Oliver!')

CRK There are so many great films. I appreciate the auteur approach to filmmaking, the director vision. I dig Hitchcock, Fellini, Lynch and many others. Hitchcock's Vertigo is especially important for me. It echoes throughout Motel Fetish. I love Luis Bunuel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou. No matter how many times I see it, it moves me. Less Dali, more Bunuel...

There are a number of films I like to see every four or five years to remind me of a something I learned from them on first viewing. For example the film based on Kirk Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five is a great lesson on the perception of time and the ability to be in the moment.

I periodically screen Paul Scharder's Mishima. The film-bio of the famous Japanese writer Yokio Mishima who committed suicide in the early 70's. I think it is the most formally perfect film. There are color aspects to this film that influenced my use of color in the Motel work.

Two films I adore are by the French director Patrice Leconte, Monsieur Hire and The Hairdresser's Husband. I closely identify with the lead character in these two films. These films are great examples of poetic idea of amour fou, of which I am a proponent.

KIU Is the interior of your home a bit 'motelesque'? (Or is it normal?)

CRK Well, it is not Motel-like; but is it normal? My residence is not decorated like a motel. Nor do I hang my Motel Fetish images. Our style leans toward mid-century modern. The walls are covered with contemporary folk and outsider art. There are a few of my non-sexual photographs mixed in. My wife Ellen, inspired by our little dog Lulu, has an eccentric collection of dog paintings by anonymous artists. Her collection is beginning to fill the house. Which is quite wonderful.

KIU What's your favourite joke?

CRK No matter what success Motel Fetish has in the greater world, I'll always be a bum in this town.

KIU There is a lot of controversy vis-à-vis the difference between a motel and a hotel. Here in England, we have hotels and Bed-and-Breakfasts, because it's so small that nobody needs to 'pull over for the night' whilst en route (unless they're going to Aberdeen or something, in which case, they deserve what they get.) With this in mind, we are a bit confused as to the difference between a ho' and mo'tel. In the centre of Boston, there is a Howard Johnsons. I always thought that Howard Johnsons were motels - and yet the geographical location of this one seems to suggest that they might actually be hotels. Chas, help us out on this one. Please!

CRK Motels in the classic American sense are designed around the automobile. At a motel, after you register, you get back in you car and drive right up to the door of your given room. The doors of a motel room open onto the outside, usually the parking lot. Unlike a hotel where you access the room from the interior via a hall way. The line between motels and hotels can be burred.

KIU BONUS QUESTION
If you couldn't be Chas Ray Krider, which other photographer - dead or alive - would you most like to be?

CRK As a photographer there is nothing wrong with being me. That's the point, find your own voice, your own vision. There are many master photographers I respect and admire. There are many that have influenced my development, Man Ray, Paul Outerbridge, Helmut Newton and Ralph Gibson.

Be careful who you wish you could be, you may find a whole new set of problems. I'm working on solving my own particular set and don't want to trade. But maybe I could be Cary Grant (but not Hugh Grant).

Website: MOTELFETISH

Motel Fetish / Chas Ray Krider
Book Published by TASCHEN
Edited by Eric Kroll
Hardcover, 9x12, 280 pages
$40.00, plus $6.00 for shipping
For international shipping


Photographic compilations containing
Chas Ray Krider's work:
• Love Lust Desire (ISBN 1560253096)
• Femmes (ISBN 1560253665)
• Blondes (ISBN 1560254173)
• Mammoth Book of Illustrated Erotica (ISBN 0786709219)
• Lighting for Glamour (ISBN 2880464587)


All images on this page copyright © Chas Ray Krider, All Rights Reserved.