LIFE AS A NIGHT PORTER - Chris Shaw
Chris Shaw worked for ten years in London hotels, all the while using his camera to document the unexpected human spectacles of hotels and keep himself awake during long working hours. Whether it's prostitutes waiting between Johns, tired hotel staff, intoxicated and profligate guests or details of faded hotel grandeur, Shaw's images transcend the physical confines of a place and instead capture a state of mind in which few people would choose to stay more than one night. "What I love most about these images is the important part of what I call chance encounters, the moments when I was so tired that I lost the artifices and techniques of photography. I simply took pictures to keep myself awake. It became artless. The people I photographed, these episodes of social fantasy, augmented and illuminated my whole night, often making hard work and my twelve-hour shift bearable. The sum of the book is actually a hotel of my own imagination built from several hotels I've worked in and some I've stayed in as a paying guest. In reality, these hotels bear little or no resemblance to the photos I took. It all depends on how you look at it. In my experience, heaven and hell are places right here on earth, and you can stay in either." --Chris Shaw
Published by Twin Palms Publishers, 2005
30.5 × 40.5 cm
64 pages
ISBN: 978-1931885508
Chris Shaw worked for ten years in London hotels, all the while using his camera to document the unexpected human spectacles of hotels and keep himself awake during long working hours. Whether it's prostitutes waiting between Johns, tired hotel staff, intoxicated and profligate guests or details of faded hotel grandeur, Shaw's images transcend the physical confines of a place and instead capture a state of mind in which few people would choose to stay more than one night. "What I love most about these images is the important part of what I call chance encounters, the moments when I was so tired that I lost the artifices and techniques of photography. I simply took pictures to keep myself awake. It became artless. The people I photographed, these episodes of social fantasy, augmented and illuminated my whole night, often making hard work and my twelve-hour shift bearable. The sum of the book is actually a hotel of my own imagination built from several hotels I've worked in and some I've stayed in as a paying guest. In reality, these hotels bear little or no resemblance to the photos I took. It all depends on how you look at it. In my experience, heaven and hell are places right here on earth, and you can stay in either." --Chris Shaw
Published by Twin Palms Publishers, 2005
30.5 × 40.5 cm
64 pages
ISBN: 978-1931885508
Chris Shaw worked for ten years in London hotels, all the while using his camera to document the unexpected human spectacles of hotels and keep himself awake during long working hours. Whether it's prostitutes waiting between Johns, tired hotel staff, intoxicated and profligate guests or details of faded hotel grandeur, Shaw's images transcend the physical confines of a place and instead capture a state of mind in which few people would choose to stay more than one night. "What I love most about these images is the important part of what I call chance encounters, the moments when I was so tired that I lost the artifices and techniques of photography. I simply took pictures to keep myself awake. It became artless. The people I photographed, these episodes of social fantasy, augmented and illuminated my whole night, often making hard work and my twelve-hour shift bearable. The sum of the book is actually a hotel of my own imagination built from several hotels I've worked in and some I've stayed in as a paying guest. In reality, these hotels bear little or no resemblance to the photos I took. It all depends on how you look at it. In my experience, heaven and hell are places right here on earth, and you can stay in either." --Chris Shaw
Published by Twin Palms Publishers, 2005
30.5 × 40.5 cm
64 pages
ISBN: 978-1931885508
