Before and After Night Porter

Before and After Night Porter gathers the black-and-white work of British photographer Chris Shaw (b. 1967), photographs shot in close-up, at unexpected angles and in high contrast, with a formal kinship to the Japanese Vivo and Provoke collectives of the 1960s.

The book brings together a selection of photographs from three of Shaw's projects: Life as a Night Porter (1995-2005), Sandy Hill Estate (1986-1989) and Weeds of Wallasey (2006-2011). Working in black and white when many of his contemporaries had turned to color, Shaw translated the blurred, disorienting language of Japanese photobooks such as Daido Moriyama's Farewell Photography and Yutaka Takanashi's Towards the City into a distinctly British context. Hardcover with dust jacket, 144 pages with 109 duotone illustrations, edited by Simon Baker and Inès de Bordas with an essay by Baker, published by Kehrer Verlag with the support of the Wilson Centre for Photography.

Shaw's photographs are held in major private and public collections, and this volume revisits and extends the body of work he began as a night porter at a Sunderland hotel in the 1990s, placing it alongside his earlier and later projects.