Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'A Room for the Night,' by Alex Yudzon . We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.

Picture yourself within the four walls of a hotel room. What do you see, and more pertinently, what do you feel? Sterile monotony, or the thrill of the transitory? For New York-based artist, Alex Yudzon, these seemingly banal spaces have been the canvas for a unique form of artistic mutation since 2014, transforming hotel rooms around America into laboratories for creativity, through the art of photographic installations. Each room is transiently inhabited, the furniture assemblage disrupted and rearranged into configurations that challenge our perception of the ordinary, making the mundane seem beautifully uncertain and intrinsically obscure. Intriguingly, each installation is disassembled once documented, creating a clandestine aura of secret activity, with the photograph being the only remnant of what transpires during Yudzon’s clandestine sojourns. In his recent project, "A Room for the Night", Yudzon uncovers the complex correlation of American society with its hotels, unrevealing the dormant emotions and uncoded theatres of transgression within these temporal habitats.

“Part of what I aim to achieve with my work is to re-awaken our sense of wonder, to create environments that force the viewer to see the mundane in a new light, to see the familiar as something uncanny and unusual once again.” - Alex Yudzon

"A Room for the Night" is an enigmatic depiction of our relationship with hotels. American hotels specifically, as the book aims to delve deep into the unease we feel in these transient spaces, which exist somewhat beyond the shackles of societal conventions and norms. These liminal spaces harness a unique tapestry of experiences, the raw potency of anonymous encounters and solitary introspection. With a mix of dark humor, silent loneliness, and uninhibited creativity, Yudzon perfectly encapsulates the narrative of these installations. It's the story of these hotels, the people who own and control them, the communities they stand within, and the path that ties them all together.

“I make the work in secret without the hotel operator's knowledge or consent and in this sense, the photographs act as evidence of an illegal act. I like to think that by seeing the images the viewer becomes both a spectator and an accomplice.”  - Alex Yudzon

Creative Genesis: What initially inspired you to begin your unique project within hotel rooms, and how has your approach evolved since your first installation?

About a decade ago I spent several weeks abroad for work. Being away from my studio with no creative outlet (I was mostly making paintings and drawings back then), I began rearranging the furniture in my hotel room as a way to let off some creative steam. When I returned to New York, I printed the photographs of these interventions and was surprised to discover that they were more compelling than much of the “serious” art I was making at that time. I’d never considered working in photography before so I initially thought this was merely a side project I could dip in and out of whenever I happened to be traveling. But, over time, as the series began to grow, it moved from the periphery to a place of prominence within my creative practice. Gradually, the installations became more elaborate and my technical abilities more precise. Now I travel specifically to make the work, crisscrossing the country from one room to the next. 

Artistic Process: You describe a specific approach to creating your installations using only existing hotel furniture and ensuring the room returns to its original state. Can you share more about this process and the challenges it presents?

I spend a good deal of time researching the rooms before my stay, looking for interesting, unusual or otherwise evocative elements. This can be related to the furniture but it can also be the architecture, the wallpaper, or even the window curtains. One time I drove three hundred miles just to work with a particular bed frame in a hotel room 2 states away. That being said, most hotel rooms are fairly standardized, there is a bed, a night stand, a chair or two, maybe a writing desk, and not much else. These objects are ubiquitous and our familiarity to them has become so ingrained that we no longer see them in any meaningful way. Part of what I aim to achieve with my work is to re-awaken our sense of wonder, to create environments that force the viewer to see the mundane in a new light, to see the familiar as something uncanny and unusual once again. 

Hotels are places of great mystery. I think that when we rent a room, more than a place of shelter, what we are really purchasing is privacy and anonymity. There is a long history of secret activity enshrined in each room. I like the idea that by deconstructing the installations before leaving, I am adding to this tradition of  hidden use. The guests that come after will never know what happened in their room prior to their arrival, just as I don’t know what happened prior to mine. The photograph is really an evidentiary object, a document of an ephemeral act which will never be repeated and of which I am the sole witness. 

Photographic Style: Your work is reminiscent of crime scene photography. Can you elaborate on this choice and how it enhances the narrative of your installations?

I love the stark atmosphere of danger and illegality in crime scene photography. By transforming private tragedy into public spectacle they force us to confront aspects of existence that we spend most of our lives trying to avoid. There's a voyeuristic thrill that comes from peering behind the curtain and glimpsing something that feels forbidden, something that happens under the cover of night. I like my work to evoke a similar atmosphere. Seen from a non artistic perspective my work is a kind of itinerant vandalism, a violation of the expected order that each hotel room implies. I make the work in secret without the hotel operator's knowledge or consent and in this sense, the photographs act as evidence of an illegal act. I like to think that by seeing the images the viewer becomes both a spectator and an accomplice. 

Themes and Motivations: The concept of the hotel as a liminal space seems central to your work. What draws you to explore themes of transgression, loneliness, and creativity within this context?

As someone who immigrated to America at an early age my concept of home has always been shrouded in  uncertainty. Questions like what exactly makes a home a home? or what transformations does a temporary space needs to undergo before it becomes a home? have long preoccupied me. Hotels are fascinating because they are doppelganger homes used as overnight accommodations by some while becoming long term residences for others. They attract such a wide range of humanity; criminals, lovers, adventurers, businessmen, prostitutes, politicians, the list is endless as are the ways in which all of these different people choose to use their rooms. I love the energy that this uncurated sea of humanity brings with it, the sheer impossibility of ever encompassing it all. It’s an unstable bitches-brew that exists outside the normal conventions of the world beyond. At the same time there is something lonely and even tragic about hotels. The hotels and motels that exist on the edges of cities form a kind of semi-permeable membrane for our society. They separate the ordered world of the city state from the lawless chaos of the open frontier. These are marginal places that often have a feeling of desperation but also one of genuine freedom. I think it's a quality that both artists and criminals are instinctively drawn to. The loosening of inhibition which occurs when one enters a space lacking clearly defined social codes allows for behavior, either transgressive or creative, not permissible in other areas of life. 

Personal Experience vs. Collective Narrative: How much of your work is autobiographical, and how do you balance personal experience with the universal themes present in hotel spaces?

When I first began making this work I was motivated by purely formal ideas related to sculpture, composition, positive vs negative space, light and shadow. But over the years, as the work has grown and as I’ve had time to engage with it on a deeper level I’ve come to understand, sometimes to my complete surprise, how much of my personal experience is wrapped up in it. For instance, it was only while writing the introduction to my book “A Room for the Night”, that I realized that the fist night my family spent in America was in a hotel. Or that, as a child, I was bullied at school for being from a country (Russia) that was considered America's arch-nemesis. Now, as an adult, I’m enacting my classmates' worst fears by traveling the country, staying in hotels under false pretenses and acting as an agent saboteur. There's a dark humor to it all that only recently became evident.

Reflections on American Hotels: "A Room for the Night" focuses specifically on American hotels. What have you discovered about American culture and its relationship with these transient spaces through your work?

The modern hotel was invented in America, and for a long time America’s capital cities were locked in a fierce competition for the status of having the largest, most luxurious hotel in the world. Hotels were the ultimate symbols of America's unique brand of democracy, anyone with enough money could rent a room no matter their social position. This shocked visiting Europeans who were used to a world where social gathering spaces were carefully segregated along class lines. Though hotels have lost much of the luster of their glory years, they are still great symbols of the American experiment. They are both an embodiment of the American dream and a representation of its antipodal shadow self. One sees this in the ways hotels are depicted in popular culture as either alluring destinations for romance and adventure or the violent settings for sexual perversion and crime. They are a microcosm of who we are as a nation, the highs and lows, the weird and the banal, the exotic and the depraved. If nations could be said to have a subconscious, hotels would be ours.

Community and Isolation: You mention the people that own and operate the hotels, as well as the communities they're in. How do you perceive your interaction (or lack thereof) with these elements during your project?

Hotels used to reflect something of the cultural heritage of the cities and regions in which they were based, now that is rarely the case. In the same way that MacDonalds wants a big mac to taste the same all over the world, a hotel chain wants their room to look and feel exactly the same from city to city. Within the growing tide of Hiltons and Holiday Inns, there is a decreasing number of family owned hotels and motels clinging for survival. Unfortunately, these are precisely the places where I’ve had my most interesting interactions. Every person, like every room, has a story to tell and some people are all too eager to share. Hotel owners in particular have the wildest tales, they see so many types of people from so many different walks of life, the things people do in their rooms is just incredible! Eventually some of these tales made it into my book and they help give the photographs a broader context. 

Part of the reason I lament the corporate takeover of the hotel industry is that, though the staff who work in these hotels are perfectly polite, they are not given to share personal stories in the same way the owners and operators of independent hotels are. I think they are probably contractually forbidden from discussing what goes on, maybe it's a liability issue, maybe it's brand protection, I really don’t know. But, I’ve never gotten a good story from someone working at a major chain and it's a shame because the stories have become an important part of the project. I like the idea that even though I’m engaged in this very private endeavor, there is also a part of the project that is grounded in a wider humanity.

Future Directions: Having explored hotel rooms as creative spaces extensively, are there new environments or contexts you are interested in experimenting with for your future projects?

The idea for “A Room for the Night” was to have a photograph from at least one hotel room in each of the 50 states. But the pandemic and then fatherhood interrupted those plans. I still have 16 states left and would love to bring the project to completion. I also plan to do a similar project in the country of my birth. Russia does not have the same corporate culture as America and most of the hotels are still reminiscent of the Soviet era. I would love to make my work there before this changes, before the big multinationals move in and those hotels are lost forever.

To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here. (Amazon, Radius Books)

Born in 1977, Alex Yudzon (website, Instagram) is a consummate artist who comfortably blurs the divide between photography, painting, sculpture, and performance. His riveting work originates from reimagining site-specific installations into autonomous photographs, subtly highlighting the way we create our personal spaces in today's world. From being exhibited at the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, China International Photography Biennial to the Arles Photo Festival, Yudzon's work has made its impress on the global stage. In 2017, he had the prestigious opportunity to be an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Following that, Yudzon marked his solo show at the Slag Gallery in Brooklyn and a two-person show at Rick Wester Fine Art in New York in 2018. The very next year, he was the proud recipient of a NYFA grant for photography, an achievement that led to his work being included in "Contemporary Performance," a museum-wide exhibition at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts. Today, our in-depth interview with Yudzon reveals his inspirations, artistic process, and his extraordinary journey creating "A Room for the Night".

More photography books?

We'd love to read your comments below, sharing your thoughts and insights on the artist's work. Looking forward to welcoming you back for our next [book spotlight]. See you then!