Patrick Hoelck

Hoelck made his directorial debut in 2009 with the independent romantic drama, Mercy, written and produced by Scott Caan.[5][6] The movie tells the story of a young novelist who tries to write about love, but realizes he will first need real-life experience to take on the subject.[7]

In 2011, Hoelck released a series of Polaroid photos entitled "Polaroid Hotel."[8] The photos were taken over the course of seventeen years, largely at the Standard Hotel in New York City. The series was first a book and later an exhibit, boasting 700 guests on its opening day. In Polaroid Hotel, Hoelck pays tribute to the art of Polaroid photography with a book of images that capture intimate moments of his life and career, showing that just because Polaroid has aged it hasn't lost its appeal. Gisela Getty said about the series, "Hoelck's images seem at first to be random, thrown together, an accidental assemblage, but they provide a narrative of our cultural landscape, a series on contemporary urban life."[9]

Following the series's release, Art in America, one of the country's leading art publications, interviewed Hoelck. In the interview, he speaks to the project's title: "I called it Polaroid Hotel because so many hotels have pictures of nothing on the walls, and I thought it would look so much better if they had Polaroids up instead; the name just stuck."[10]

Hoelck and photography peer Michael Muller started a program called Photo School together. Photo School is a series of online tutorial videos that offer aspiring photographers lessons in everything from camera phone photography to complex lighting techniques. Longtime friends, Hoelck and Muller founded Photo School to fill a void in traditional photography education as well as allow a community of photographers at all skill and professional levels to connect and advance their craft.[11][12]