Inside Tunisia’s Artificial Paradises

What I learned photographing dozens of hotel resorts in a week

Photo by author.

Earlier this year I was hired for an unusual assignment: travel to Tunisia with a mission to visit and photograph as many hotels as possible in a week. The reason was simple. Hotel-provided images are often heavily retouched, setting unrealistic expectations for guests. The result is disappointment, complaints, and hours of customer service work — sometimes even lost clients and a damaged reputation. To avoid this, the agency decided to build a library of authentic images, and they brought me in to create it.

Selfie in a really good room. Photo by author.

At first, I thought this would be a classic architectural photography job. I was already searching through Tilt-Shift lens rentals (maybe even a purchase), but after looking at the itinerary, it was obvious I was aiming too high. Sometimes six, but usually eight or even ten hotels per day, with bus transfers in between, meant only one thing: run-and-gun photography. I’ve had a tripod with me, but never the time to use it.

Typically I didn’t have more than five minutes per hotel room, because I also had to photograph other facilities — lobby, dining room…