The Hollywood Suites (Nudes) #23 1974 - 1975

Curator: Steve Kahn’s “The Hollywood Suites (Nudes) #23,” shot between 1974 and 1975, is a gelatin-silver print, presenting a section of an interior. What strikes you first about it? Editor: Immediately, the plushness and the grain of the photograph. There’s a tangible feeling of vintage textures—that shag carpet and velvet chair juxtaposed with the smoothness of skin. Curator: Yes, it’s an intriguing mix of intimacy and, dare I say, theatricality. The focus is drawn to the nude legs and the platform sandals. There is this sense of expectation, but we see so little. Editor: Those platform sandals are fascinating. They scream the ‘70s, both in terms of fashion and what they represent about female agency. This woman is literally elevated by these objects of desire, yet the photographic medium itself reproduces and amplifies these consumer objects. Curator: Absolutely. There's an ambiguity there. On one hand, Kahn presents an intimate glimpse, but through his specific framing, also a commentary on the staged nature of allure. We become implicated as viewers— voyeurs, perhaps? Editor: Right. And it's a Gelatin-silver print so it reflects this highly industrialized, reproducable element to photography itself, moving this piece away from 'art' into a different type of documentation. I think Kahn pushes those boundaries and asks us to do so too. It’s the process of making, consuming, and circulating images as much as it is the subject portrayed. Curator: I see it, the piece sits between a study of fleeting moments, and an examination of mass production. Considering all of that, there is this lingering mood it invokes of something familiar, yet unseen. Editor: A certain manufactured mystique, ready to be consumed. Something quite apt for "Hollywood Suites." A photograph of desire, commodification, and how the apparatus changes how we see and consume art.