Misty Keasler

Misty Keasler (American, b. 1978) Cake Room, Snowman's Hotel, Kobe 2005 Archival inkjet print 10" x 10 inch image on 14 x 11 inch paper Signed edition of 50   Japanese love hotels were originally established as places where young couples could go to be intimate while they were still living in close quarters with their parents. Now the hotels cater to a wider variety of needs and have become extremely inventive. Fantastic props, backgrounds, and accoutrements reflect the desire individuals have to be stimulated and defined by their surroundings. While Keasler’s Love Hotels photographs are about sex, when we mentally enter the depicted spaces, we become implicated in fantasies. Rather than being simply absorbers of visual facts, we are forced to be imaginatively active. Misty Keasler graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2001. In 2003 she received the Dorthea Lange-Paul Taylor prize from the Center for Documentary Studies and was named one of the “25 under 25 up-and-coming American