Photographer: Chris Shaw 'Life as a Night Porter'

The thing I like most about the pictures is the large element of what I call the chance meeting, the times I was so tired I lost the artifice and techniques of photography. I just took photographs to keep me awake. It became artless. The people I photographed, these episodes in the social fantastic would heighten and illuminate my whole night, often making a difficult job and my twelve-hour shift bearable. The sum of the book is really a hotel of my own imagination constructed from several hotels I have worked in and some Ive stayed in as a paying guest. In reality these hotels bear little or no resemblance to my actual pictures. It just depends on how you look at things. In my experience heaven and hell are places right here on earth, and you can stay in either one.