The rooms smell faintly of industrial cleaner and musty carpet that never quite dries. The walls are a putrid green, awash in artificial fluorescent light. The long hallways are mostly quiet during the day, interrupted only by the relentless bark from an unattended dog, a muffled sneeze, or the canned laughter of a TV at the end of hall. Beneath the sounds of traffic on the nearby road lies evidence of other long-term guests, people not entirely settled, bearing the accrued heft of life, suspended between homelessness and stability.  Tucked behind freeway exits and forgotten intersections, these hotels, motels, and "notells" serve as makeshift homes for those edged out of the housing market and the American Dream.

 Through her lens, Karen Lippowiths reveals a hidden America — the precarious lives of low-wage workers, undocumented migrants, those battling addiction and mental illness — individuals surviving long-term in budget hotels in EXTENDED STAY.    These residents exist in limbo, teetering between shelter and the streets, paycheck and pavement. Lippowiths reveals the quiet resilience and stark vulnerability of lives lived in limbo. Her intimate, unsentimental portraits humanize the marginalized, challenging viewers to confront the consequences of economic inequality. Her work aims to see what society chooses to ignore, and asks the question: Who gets to be seen?

Prologue