Roy-Andres Hofer Team: Roy Andres Hofer und Satoru Takahashi

In the photographic work ‘le tokio LOVE HOTEL’, a joint project with the photographer Satoru Takahashi, Roy Andres Hofer turns to a specifically Japanese phenomenon: the love hotel. These hotels are neither the usual rooms by the hour nor are they brothels. They constitute much more a sort of “place of retreat” for lovers. In a land where space and privacy are rare commodities, love-couples can go to these discreet oases, whether married or not, engaged in extra-marital affairs or simply one night stands, in order to satisfy their desires. . Since the appearance of these establishments after World War II and the official prohibition of prostitution in the 1950s, the love hotels have become an important and widely accepted element of modern Japanese life.
With the series ‘le tokio LOVE HOTEL’, Roy Andres Hofer subtly analyses the joining of man and woman and the question of sexes in a land where bodily contact in public is strictly taboo but where, at the same time, one of the world’s biggest sex industries is actively pursued. With this contrast, the artist touches a key theme of his overall works, his frank criticism of the global mass consumption of products of any kind: not only the erotic becomes a consumer product, but equally personal feelings are exploited for profit - and the demand is great, as the love hotels in Japan prove.