She cooked his weird dinners, dealt with his volcanic rants, and read his prose back to him from dark till dawn. As Chloe Sells’ photographs of the gonzo writer’s chaotic Colorado cabin are published, she remembers an invigorating, inspirational figure

One evening towards the end of 2003, Chloe Sells was entering the J-Bar in Aspen, Colorado, in search of a late night drink, when an older woman approached her. As Sells recalls in her new photobook, Hot Damn!: “She looked me up and down and said, ‘We’re looking for some help for Hunter. Are you a night owl? Would you be interested?’”

Hunter, as every local knew, was Hunter S Thompson, the celebrated creator of “gonzo” journalism, and the town’s most infamous resident. The woman was his wife, Anita. “It took me only a moment,” Sells says, “to answer ‘Yes’ to everything.”