Photographer Erwin Olaf’s ‘Hotel’ Nudes

Dutch artist Erwin Olaf is presenting two sets of spellbinding, provocative photographs at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler through March 20: the contrasting series “Dawn/Dusk,� which mixes color and black-and-white photography (a departure for Olaf); and “Hotel,� a collection of seedy, melancholic images of disaffected, doll-like, and generally nude women positioned around noirish hotel rooms. Olaf claims he was inspired by the work of nineteenth-century photographer Frances B. Johnson for “Dusk/Dawn.� The influence is echoed in the re-created period atmosphere and the focus on African-American subjects, and extended in “Dawn,� which focuses on pale-skinned subjects in stark, blindingly white spaces.