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Hot Damn! By Chloe Sells.
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Photographs by Chloe Sells
GOST Books, London, UK, 2022. 184 pp., 8¼x11½x¾".
Like an acid tab slipped under the tongue, Chloe Sells’ Hot Damn! comes on rather quickly. Everything seems ho-hum at first, just another photobook, this one unearthing bygone odds and ends — some sort of party house apparently, or a writer’s retreat? Pictures of wood-paneled rooms and hand-jotted papers are presented with the warm tint of old slide film. The reader figures their backstory will soon be unveiled. But before that can happen the walls begin to drip, and the book veers toward a psychedelic rabbit hole.
The first hints of strangeness come with a picture of a snowy cabin and carport. It’s been tilted, cropped, and split around the page edge. The next photo is awash in lava lamp swirls, and the ones just beyond are even more mangled. Before long, these minor anomalies have exploded into a full-blown trip. A rush of patterns, obfuscation, and bright colors come in succession, settling into the photobook equivalent of an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. With no explanatory captions or text (these don’t appear until the very end) the reader is on their own to sort things out. It’s probably best to just buckle in and enjoy the ride. This thing could last all night.
If Hot Damn! is LSD-inspired, the design is an homage to its primary subject, Hunter S. Thompson. The late great father of Gonzo journalism was among the more notorious — and highest functioning — druggies in literary history. His pill-popping exploits are legendary, but alas their translation into creative content has proven tricky. How best to convey his mindset, his presence, his manic charisma to a sober audience? It might be impossible. Nevertheless, Terry Gilliam gave it a shot directing the 1998 adaptation of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, a hallucinatory romp spinning out of control at every turn. If you enjoyed that film, Hot Damn! might be considered an aesthetic cousin, with a firmer tie to reality (these are old snapshots, after all, not a Hollywood set), and rooted to the foundation of Thompson’s Aspen cabin.
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His home was known colloquially as Owl Farm, and for two years Chloe Sells had first-hand access to its inner workings. An Aspen native, she was hired by his wife as Hunter S. Thompson’s personal assistant in 2003. She spent most nights on the job until his suicide 2 years later. As Sells writes in Hot Damn!’s afterword, by this point in Thompson’s career, “almost his whole life had been documented — except for his home — the ramshackle, remarkable creative heartland that was Owl Farm. It needed to be visually archived, he said to me, and it was mine to photograph if I liked.” She took up his offer with relish, categorically documenting his posters, shelves, mementos, TVs, and rooms. Gradually she compiled loads of film, which she stashed away for later. If she didn’t delve into the material at the time, Thompson still made an indelible impression. “He was as bright as they come,” she writes. Elsewhere she declares him, “an unremitting genius.”
With Hot Damn! Sells has opened a belated window — or perhaps a kaleidoscope? — into that genius. Finally, we can see what made Raoul Duke tick. As with any old snaps, these casual moments contain a wealth of raw information and insights. There are posters of Thompson’s campaign for Aspen Sheriff (running on the “Freak Power” ticket, he was unsuccessful), old typewriters, bulletin boards, kitchen decor, pharmaceuticals, screens blaring porn, and other hints of Aspen’s “hedonistic, bohemian lifestyle” (Sells’ description). Photos of old dishes and containers have a ritualized sensibility, while motivational notes tacked to walls bear the hallmarks of a writer’s residence. Thompson’s 1990 arrest warrant is here (Unlawful Possession — a case which eventually crumbled), while yellowed interiors bounded by snowbound peaks convey the lonely remove of a mountain cabin.
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All are informative, the photographic equivalent of poking through someone’s private locker. But deciphering these old scenes is not easy. The main obstacle is that, as mentioned above, most pictures have been obscured by Sells with marble swirls and splotches. Between various colored gels, layering, stains, cuts, and tilts, the original contents are largely transformed or buried. Perhaps that’s just as well. There’s enough data to capture Thompson’s day-to-day lifestyle, while less tangible evidence is captured in after effects.
Not only is the psychedelic treatment suitable for Thompson, it fits seamlessly with Sells’ oeuvre. Since her early training at RISD (where she earned a BFA just before working for Thompson), and MFA, she has become an accomplished fine art photographer, making her mark with analog C-prints made in a darkroom, typically dressed in odd trimmings and surface applications. The marbled striations in Hot Damn! might look peculiar to the initiated. But for Chloe Sells they’re par for the course, a natural extension of earlier projects. Looking back now at the winding path of her career, it’s tempting to trace its main currents back to Owl Farm. This book and this time period might hold a special place in her heart. But that’s mere speculation from an outside observer.
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Hot Damn! is a dense monograph packed with images, with scant blank pages or restful moments. I never encountered Hunter S. Thompson in real life, but by all accounts he was an intense person, so it makes sense for a biography (which this is, in a way) to read as an immersive experience. The photos are impressionistic and unrelenting. They eventually leave the reader so scrambled that a debriefing is required. Thankfully this comes at the end with an illustrated index of selected thumbnail images from the book, each captioned with a personal anecdote by Sells. It’s well written and entertaining. Even better yet is the accompanying account of her job experience and her impressions of Thompson. All provide much needed context. The fact that they were held back until the end is a nod to Thompson’s modus operandi: embrace life as it comes, then sort out the meaning later. In other words, buckle in and enjoy the ride. This thing could last all night.
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