On My Shelf: Bedmounds by Noah Kalina

If you travel enough, you know that even vacant public spaces contain echoes of a human presence: luggage wheel gullies formed into worn carpets, chipped chrome on the corners of faucets, vague odors of weed, sweat, sex, and cleaning products. 

The truth is, even behind locked hotel doors you’re never really alone.

To me, that’s what makes Bedmounds by Noah Kalina so special. 

Bedmounds - Noah Kalina

Coming in at just under 100 pages, Bedmounds is a collection of hotel room still life photos. Far from the pristine, editorial images you’d find in a brochure, but still beautiful and provocative in their own right. 

While the rooms are in situ, the beds are not. Fluffed, folded, molded, and craft—Kalina rearranges the hotel bed sheets into abstract, amorphous blobs set in the middle of the mattress.

Each photo captures a vacant space touched by unseen hands. 

A reminder that you are neither the first nor last person to step foot in that room. That at some point a housekeeper will come in to erase any memory of your presence. 

Temporal art in transient spaces.

Bedmounds - Noah Kalina

But what impressed me the most about Bedmounds is the overall harmony of the collection. From upscale, sunbathed retreats to water stained, midwestern abodes—Kalina’s curation is impeccable. Each image stands on its own, while adding to the overall gestalt of the project. 

A project that celebrates the art of finding whimsy in otherwise mundane settings.

Bedmounds is available now via Yoffy Press.