March 8: Your lens to the interne t's most powerful photographs. 📸

March 8: Week in Photography

Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs.

📸 Most Powerful Photo of the Week 📸

Mark Humphrey / AP

A string of deadly tornadoes ripped through Nashville, leaving at least 24 people dead and a trail of ruin in their path. In this devastating picture, homes in Cookeville, Tennessee, are left shredded among tossed vehicles, downed power lines, and flattened trees. Despite this heartbreaking loss of life and property, Nashville residents have banded together to help their neighbors and have proven to the world that community is far stronger than nature's wrath.

📸For Your 👀 Only:

Inside the Chelsea Hotel with Linda Troeller

The Hotel Chelsea in New York City is notorious for the creative, famous, and iconic personalities that have graced its rooms. Built in 1884, it's the place where Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey and where writers like Allen Ginsberg, Mark Twain, O. Henry, and Jack Kerouac once found inspiration. The hotel has served as a muse for musicians like Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Madonna, as well as artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

For photographer Linda Troeller, the hotel is not only a place she once called home, but also represents a more creative and freer vision of old New York City. Her book Living in the Chelsea Hotel is a collection of photographs and words produced during her residency there during the 1990s and on.

Here, Troeller shares with BuzzFeed News some of her favorite images from the book and the story of how, like the many artists who stayed there, she found inspiration in these hotel hallways.

What does the Chelsea Hotel represent to you?

The culture has woken up to the fact that the past is quickly disappearing. Here in New York, gentrification is rampant. You just can’t live like you did in the past. Sure, you can go to Urban Outfitters and buy something that’s reminiscent of the past, but you can’t buy the personal circle of friends that one might have had in old New York.

Actor Ethan Hawke at the Chelsea Hotel, 10th floor, 2000.

To imagine that you could come downstairs to the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel and socialize among artistic types, designers, musicians, and people who came there with the sole purpose of meeting people and creating something beautiful. You won’t find a lobby like that anywhere. I was living in a situation where people were arriving looking for a fresh dream. Many of them saw the hotel as the place to go!

How did you find yourself living at the Chelsea Hotel?

In 1994, my building was being bought and it was time to look for a new place to live. An art collector friend of mine had suggested that I speak with Stanley Bard at the Chelsea. He told me there was one room available on the eighth floor that had once been a writers room. When I went upstairs to see the room, there was a giant snake in the room in a cage with no top and goth clothing everywhere. He said, “These people will be gone in 24 hours — do you want it?”

Guest Room Desk, 1996.

So you met the people in your pictures by chance in the lobby?

I always kept my Leica on my shoulder. Through the hotel’s bellhop Keemore — who, by the way, moved into the hotel thinking he would be a filmmaker but became a bellhop to pay his rent — I was introduced to Alexander McQueen, who was in the lobby and planning his first Lower East Side show. After the meeting, Alexander said, “Oh! I want to see your pictures!” He came to my room on the eighth floor and had a look at the work. He invited me to his show, and from there I met many of the other people who I’d photograph.

From left: Artists Christo, Jeanne-Claude and Stanley Bard, former managing director, Chelsea Hotel, 1999.

Is there a message you want to convey through these pictures?

I want people to feel comfortable being creative and to indulge the individuality of being yourself and having like people around you. And not just virtually around you on social media!

The Chelsea Hotel was a little cubbyhole of unique people. As you walk around the neighborhood today, everything has a new name and everything is so clean. I believe that people really want to taste history and want to know that such creativity does not have to live in the past. You can make your own art community and live it.

📸This Week's Photo Stories from BuzzFeed News 📸

Among the pictures accompanying this week's headlines are shots from the devastating aftermath of a string of tornadoes in Nashville, as well as our ongoing reportage of the coronavirus outbreak.

Our first gallery shows how the people of Nashville have banded together to help their neighbors during the recovery effort following a storm that left at least 24 people dead. Next we report on what some have dubbed the "toilet paper gold rush" as Americans flood supermarkets to stock up on emergency supplies over fear of a coronavirus outbreak in the US. Our last story visits tourist sites across the globe, which, under normal circumstances, would be flooded with visitors this time of year but instead remain empty over fears of the coronavirus.

Find more of the week's best photo stories here.

Devastation in Nashville: Cleaning Up After the Storm

Mark Humphrey / AP

Nashville strength and compassion following tragedy.

Toilet Paper Gold Rush: Preparing for the Coronavirus

Reuters

Americans turned out over the weekend in long lines to stockpile face masks, nonperishables, and other emergency essentials after news of the first US deaths due to the coronavirus.

Empty Streets: Tourism Amid the Coronavirus Outbreak

Manuel Silvestri / Reuters

Tourist hotspots around the globe are seeing a dramatic decrease in visitors due to ongoing concerns over the spread of the coronavirus.

📸Your Weekly Palate Cleanser 📸

Kai-Otto Melau / Getty Images

In this beautiful and frigid picture, an athlete makes their way over the Hardangervidda in Eidfjord, Norway, during the Expedition Amundsen, known as the world's toughest expedition race, on Feb. 29. Do you think you'd have what it takes to compete?

"That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Gabriel and Kate

📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Gabriel Sanchez is the photo essay editor based in New York and loves cats. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs. You can always reach us here.
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