For most of its history, Chelsea has been known as a haven for bohemians of all kinds. Famous residents include Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, Dylan Thomas, Janis Joplin, Arthur C. Clarke, and, perhaps most infamously, his girlfriend Nancy Spungen in Room 100 in 1978. Including Sid Vicious, who was accused of killing . Alexandra Oder, daughter of Andy Warhol's muse Viva, describes her time growing up in Chelsea in the 1980s in her recent memoir Don't Call Me Home: There is. Apartments: empty apartments, busy apartments, and apartments of long-term residents so thoroughly decorated, with turquoise paint, gold enamel, plants, and stickers, that the interior bleeds over the door seams and into the hallways. And plastic toys. '' Her mother frequently visited neighbors such as composer George Kleinsinger, who was filled with reptiles, and experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke, whose entire apartment was decorated in black and white with a Felix the Cat theme. The order continued. .
Ten years later, when Notarberardino moved into the hotel, he was struck by the eclectic atmosphere, where surprises lurked around every corner. “Chelsea was run-down and full of artists and people who couldn't afford to live anywhere else,” he told me. “I felt like I was walking into a movie, like I was on the set of 'Bad Lieutenant.'” He was immediately drawn to the hotel's rugged surroundings and its unconventional residents, but… It took him three years to regain the courage to photograph them. One night in the fall of 1997, he finally took the plunge and approached an elderly drag queen he saw in a hotel elevator. She agreed to have her portrait taken in his room. This set him on a series that he would spend the next 20 years pursuing. “I just saw some amazing people,” he told me. “And I couldn’t resist taking pictures of them.”
