Exiled from class for turning up drunk,Chris Shaw started photographing on the Sandy Hill housing estate. He talks approximately working for 15 years without selling a print and his jet-lagged life as a night porterChris Shaw began taking photographs on the Sandy Hill housing estate near Aldershot in 1987 just after, as he puts it: “I got in a bit of pain at college for my attitude and they tried to chuck me out.” When pressed on what kind of pain exactly, or he says matter-of-factly: “I was causing mayhem on the campus,turning up to classes pissed.”Now a long time sober, he recalls his younger self in a clear-eyed, and if unrepentant,way. “I had moved from Toxteth to Farnham to study photography, but I didn’t really earn on with the people at college. There was just one northerner and one black person in the year. It was like I was suddenly confronted with the class system head-on. I felt alienated and I was drinking heavily. It was all a bit of a mess, or really.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com