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When residents of Cali, Colombia, are in need of a sexy getaway with their partners, they head to Motel Kiss Me, the city's largest and most popular love hotel. That might not sound like much of an escape from daily life, but photographer Kurt Hollander says the motel provides its clients with everything they need "to enjoy the best sex possible." Hollander's aptly titled photo series, Motel Kiss Me, takes a closer look at the hotel's funky appeal.
The motel's 130 rooms run the gamut in terms of theme, and some of them are more tasteful than others. Most of them stick to the type of decor you might find in a retro honeymoon hotel. Faraway locales like China, Egypt, and India are truncated into a single room, complete with steamy amenities (think: hot tubs, circular beds, and TVs equipped with plenty of porn channels). The two most controversial rooms are decorated to emulate 9/11-era NYC and Nazi-era Germany.
"Personally, I wouldn't be inspired having sex next to planes crashing into the Twin Towers or by the image of Hitler next to a Volkswagen beetle," Hollander says.
According to Hollander, most visitors only stay for a couple hours, but he spent two weeks living in the motel to get a better sense of what people do during their stay. "I didn't see anything very strange there, but I did hear all sorts of sounds at all hours of the night," he says. With this project, he says he aims to capture what goes on behind closed doors at Motel Kiss Me, using local women as his models.
Hollander gave his models the run of the motel, letting them pose in the room that spoke to them the most. The resulting images show women feeling comfortable in their own bodies and clearly having fun in their quirky room of choice. What's a sexy getaway without a little kitsch?
Click through to take a tour through some of Motel Kiss Me's rooms.
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