When it comes to traveling these days, it almost feels like a case of “pics or it didn’t happen.” But Autograph Collection Hotels is embracing the sensation this summer with Impressions, a project with Fotografiska which immersed photographers in four international hotels and let them, and their inspirations, run wild.
The American talent (and Guggenheim fellow) Alessandra Sanguinetti used Mesm Tokyo as her home base, then ventured onto city streets for high-contrast portraits of the charismatic subjects she encountered. Cristina De Middel made dynamic, playful work that disorients the surroundings she explored at the Alaia Belize in San Pedro. Gregory Halpern stayed closer to home, bunking at The National inside a former Oklahoma City bank; the familiarity fostered the empathy he exposes in photographs of boxing gyms and rodeos.
Oslo-based Jonas Bendiksen went to Berlin. From his perch at Hotel Luc—a new jewel in Marriott Bonvoy’s crown, all Prussian-themed with busts of Frederick the Great and a bowl of the potatoes he endowed the royal status, both made of porcelain, and blue walls boasting portraits of modern royalty—he created photographs deploying the city’s fondness for minimalism and repetition to moody, melancholy effect.
The four photographers’ work, and a short film documenting its creation, were recently unveiled at Fotografiska New York, and will travel to Autograph Collection hotels around the world and Fotografiska’s soon-to-open Berlin and Shanghai locations in the coming months. Limited-edition prints are available on Fotografiska’s website and at select hotels, to benefit the not-for-profit Bronx Documentary Center. Guests at select properties will, upon check-in, receive complimentary Lomography 35mm cameras and rolls of film, so they can go out and make impressions of their own.
