Roger Eberhard : Standard

In thirty-two cities across five continents, Swiss photographer Roger Eberhard booked a standard double room at the local Hilton and took two photographs: one of the room’s interior—always from the same perspective—and one of the view from the hotel room’s window. The result of this project is Standard, an unusual urban panorama of photographs, reproduced large enough to make it easy to see the diversity within the uniformity of the world’s largest international hotel chain.
           
In this era of increasing globalization and commercial capitalism, Standard shows that international hotel chains, restaurants, and other establishments maintain a remarkably uniform design—a true “standard”—that has made many places and cities feel almost interchangeable. At the same time, they retain some of their unique characteristics, and Eberhard’s photographs reveal the subtle, yet important, influence of local taste. The book also contains an essay by German novelist Benedict Wells on the monotony he feels while staying in a succession of hotel rooms on book tours, as well as essays by art historian Franziska Solte and curator Nadine Wietlisbach.