Motel 42 is a series of self-portraits created in the United States on black-and-white film. Each photo was hand-printed and hand-colored with oil paint. Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon joined her musician partner on his tour and discovered a world she had only seen in films: American motels. The photographer chose to document the 42 rooms they slept in, morning after morning, rather than the incredible deserts and unimaginable purple mountains she encountered during the day. What she wanted to show was what she found in those rooms and what she could later create with her brushes.

The idea behind this project was to capture the intimacy, the interior, the silence of this overwhelming journey. Eloïse created pictorial compositions, using her body as a common thread while capturing the soul of each space—a rollercoaster at the window, a light suggesting an apocalyptic end or the arrival of an angel behind a pane of glass, skin, love, and solitude. Through the use of color, she transformed these gray and grimy rooms into strange and precious worlds.

Motel 42 is a series published as a book, released by Leaf Editions in June 2024. The book also includes 42 texts, a personal journal recounting the ghosts, love, and melancholy of this journey through the rooms.