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 Roger Eberhard - Standard, an unusual urban panorama of sixty-four photographs, reproduced large enough to make it easy to see the diversity within the uniformity of one of the world's largest international hotel chains. In this era of increasing globalisation and commercialisation, Roger Eberhard - Standard shows that international hotel chains, restaurants, and similar 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 successions of hotel rooms on book tours, as well as essays by art historian Franziska Solte and curator Nadine Wietlisbach.

Roger Eberhard, Swiss-born and American-educated photographer, conceives his works as series, taking-up impulses and inspirations for new projects from any possible source, such as a story he learns about or media reports catching his attention. He is particularly fascinated by people in the landscape, or rather the absence of mankind from a place leaving it again to nature and weather. But he has also done series of portraits of people in their given environment. Some series he has created in collaboration with other artists. In late 2008 Eberhard set out for a campaign searching for the visually lyrical backstage of the United States. His road-trip stared in Reno, Nevada, and led him through the states of Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming to Denver, Colorado. From there he continued his journey to Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and finally across Arizona back to Nevada. The resulting series 'Wilted Country' is published for the first time in this book. The resulting, highly atmospheric photographs show the enduring impact humans have on their landscape and simultaneously offer an evocative tour through the past and present of the American West. The images are accompanied by essays by Anthony Bannon, director of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY, and by the young German novelist Benedict Wells.