“Lounge Lizzard” 1998 © Chris Shaw

Galerie du Jour agnès b. is having a photo exhibition “Night Porter and Sandy Hill” by Chris Shaw till March 19th. He was raised in Wallasey in the north of England.

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Ostracised the schooled life with “little rich kids” at College of Art and Design, he takes refuge in alcohol and often skips classes to immerse himself in the Sandy Hill housing estate, where he can finally hang out with “normal” people and communicate with them through the lens of his camera.

The “anti-aesthetic” style as he puts it finds its climax in his most famous series “Life as a Night Porter” that he started in the early nineties. Compelled to take up a job as a porter in a London hotel to avoid homelessness, Chris Shaw decides to use these long and boring night shifts to photograph with his Instamatic the surrealistic scenes that take place under his eyes. The viewer becomes a voyeur, who tries to guess the events that took place while deciphering the captions scribbled with a marker pen by the witness of these sleepless nights.

Chris Shaw “Night Porter and Sandy Hill”
Date: January 22nd – March 19th, 2016
Open: 12:00-19:00 (Closed on Sunday and Monday)
Place: Galerie du Jour agnès b.
Address: 44 Rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris
Tel: +33 (0)1 4454 5590
http://www.galeriedujour.com