I was a 21-year-old student at ArtCenter College of Design in California when I was assigned a documentary photography project. A model I was working with suggested I come and see a Hollywood hotel he was living in. It was fascinating. I could see there was quite a cast of characters there.
I’d always wondered who lived in this type of single-room occupancy hotel, where people might stay anything from one night to 30 years. I’d grown up in Wyoming, in a big house with a lawn and a dog, so it was foreign to me. I decided to move in and realised later, when I studied visual anthropology, that what I was doing was “participant observation”. I’ve continued to work like that throughout my career – become directly involved with my subjects for a long time. I’ve taken eight years to do a project.
