Personal project · 2024
Late Shift
The people who keep Karama and Al Quoz running after dark: barbers, cafeteria cooks, cleaners and mechanics, photographed over one cool season.
The project
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Client
Personal project, published in Liwan Weekend
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Year and place
2024, Karama and Al Quoz, Dubai
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The brief
Self-initiated. Twelve workplaces, one cool season, all photographed after 9pm.
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What was delivered
A 10-page cover story in Liwan Weekend and an exhibition of 20 prints at Warehouse 21, Alserkal Avenue.
The story
Late Shift started because I kept driving home past the same lit windows. A barber in Karama who stays open until ten for men coming off shift. A cafeteria that does its busiest trade at midnight: fish fry, parathas and karak through the hatch. A garage in Al Quoz with its door half up and a radio on.
From October to April I went back to the same dozen places, always after nine at night, and asked if I could stay for an hour. Most people said yes on the second or third visit. I photographed through windows first, then from inside once they knew me.
Liwan Weekend ran the series as a cover story in March 2024, and Warehouse 21 in Alserkal Avenue showed twenty prints that November. Every person in the series came to the opening, and the barber cut hair in the gallery for the last hour.
From the shoot
Tap any photograph to see it larger.
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Barber, Karama -
Cafeteria, the busiest hour -
Office cleaner, Business Bay, 11pm -
Garage in Al Quoz, one in the morning
- workplaces
- 12
- exhibition prints
- 20
- pages in print
- 10
Late Shift is the most honest picture of working Dubai we’ve run in years. Readers wrote in for weeks.
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